Dreamers Live to Die
by Loopholes47
Summary: I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]
1. Chapter 1

**Dreamers Live to Die Chapter 1**

**I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]**

**Published 2019.12.23**

* * *

Hazelle Hawthorne squeezed her husband's hand so hard her fingers felt the slightest bit numb from the pressure. This pain, of course, was nothing compared to what the birthing process happening down below.

"It's crowning! The baby's crowning!" The head healer exclaimed. A midwife gasped and ran to the side of the room to collect the final materials for the birth.

The soon to be mother screamed and writhed from the pain, and her husband, Blaise Hawthorne, did his best to soothe his wife by whispering sweet nothings into her ear. Deep down in the Seam, there were no prolific painkillers offered in the ramshackle hut Mrs. Everdeen, the head healer, had assigned to be the area's hospital.

"Is - ah, ahhh! - is it almost over...?!" Hazelle cried out, seemingly squeezing her husband's hand even tighter, if that were possible.

A baby's muted cries pounded in the musty room, suddenly making all of the effort behind child bearing worth it. The midwife, some gangly teenage girl whose name Hazelle had forgotten in the haze of emotion, cleaned off the baby with a clean towel and gently handed it into the mother's outstretched arms.

"It's a boy," the midwife added. "Just as you predicted."

Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne gazed lovingly into the newborn's squishy red face, his name at the tip of their tongues.

"Gale," the father whispered. "He'll be our little Gale Hawthorne."

A sharp contraction kicked through Hazelle - only this time, more painful than before. She screamed in pain, allowing her husband to pick the baby off her chest to look down at the growing puddle of blood where the head healer just cleaned.

Mrs. Everdeen raced back to the birthing station, gasping in surprise with one word: "Twins!"

The new parents blinked dumbly when another contraction hit and another baby started crowning. Six minutes later, a second baby was nestled in the parents' arms.

The twins each had a mop of fluffy black hair, pudgy pinkish skin, and lungs made of steel. The healer and the midwife left the room, arms full of bloodied cloths, for the new parents to spend time with their newborn twins.

"I didn't know that twins ran through your gene pool," Blaise whispered in awe, running a hand through his wife's sweaty hair. "What should we name her?"

Hazelle gave a simple smile. "Her name will be Blaire. Gale and Blaire Hawthorne, our children."

* * *

I worried my parents a lot while growing up as a baby up till the end of my toddler years because of all the denial I was in during that time period. Living in _Panem_. Twin sister to _freaking Gale Hawthorne. District Twelve. The Seam_. Of course I was in denial - who'd even dream up this type of rebirth? I barely spoke, didn't defer to adults because I couldn't find the connection between kids respecting adults because my mind was that of an adult, and never whined about smaller portions at the dinner table when our parents' work was slow.

When Rory and Vick, another pair of twins, were born, however, I began to wonder how on earth mom and dad were going to support four children. Dad, a coal miner, and mom, a vendor at the Hob who mainly sold carved squirrel bones, had barely enough to support the household. Especially considering how much time mom spent taking care of two five year olds and newborn twin boys. It was then that I wizened up, shook out of my stupor, and put effort into supporting my new family.

Wisps of memories from my past life seeped into the new one, where, once I enrolled into school, shocked the teacher with the way I could already read the most difficult books and helped the older kids do their maths. Instead of getting bullied for the display of intelligence, students and the teacher respected me. In District Twelve, having a set foundation for future work represented how successful you could become, possibly even finding work in the merchant section or with the local government with the Mayor or in the Justice Building. I sat through classes with my twin, helping him learn to read and write and helped him memorize the funny local songs the children liked to sing. Instead of thinking Gale as my twin, though, he was more of a younger brother than anything. Physically, I knew he was older (by six whole minutes!), but even our parents accepted the fact that I'd be the one looking out for him.

While our parents were out at work, it was up to us to look after our baby brothers. Rory and Vick never stopped crying, making me concerned that at least one of them had a form of colic, but it wasn't like Healer Everdeen had the supplies to officially diagnose something as common as "irrational crying," considering their ages.

I was eight years old when I first met the Girl on Fire. Mom gave me a single coin and sent me off to find a healer to purchase medicine off of for Rory's burning fever. It was only by miracle that Vick hadn't also been infected with whatever ailed his identical twin. I knocked on the Everdeens' door for the first time, a wave of unease at being sent alone for this errand. The Seam wasn't the safest place for weak little children, especially after Peacekeepers had found out about the crazy old couple who lived just a few doors down from us, the Hawthornes, who picked off little children during play hours to cannibalize on them. Hunger did strange things to people.

When a haggard young woman answered the door, she ushered me inside, commenting something about my age and gender.

"Rory's got a fever so bad that he can't stop crying," I explained to the blonde woman, watching as she lead me to her living room, where a wobbly shelf of mason jars were all stocked with different types of herbs and medicinal pastes. "Is this enough to pay for some medicine?"

A six year old girl with black hair that matched mine, greyish blue eyes, and skin the slightest bit paler than the usual olive complexion, peeked her head from out the hallway with peeling wallpaper. "Mom? Who's she?"

Katniss Everdeen didn't look any different than the average six year old from District Twelve, which was more surprising than seeing her so differently than from how she was portrayed in the books and movies. She wasn't old enough to establish herself with her famous bow and arrows, didn't have her elegant and lithe hunter body yet, and was just a simple little girl in a power hungry world. The savior of Panem still spoke with a lisp and appeared constantly on the verge of tears, and I felt sicker than I had before the denial had set in all those years ago. She was expected to carry the weight of the nation on her shoulders as the rebellion's figurehead and victor of the seventy-fourth Hunger Games. How would her mother react if I told her that her daughter was going to be in games for her sixteenth year?

Mrs. Everdeen snatched up the single coin with her bony fingers and replaced my open palms with a small glass vial filled to the brim with greenish brown paste. "I want the vial back by tomorrow," she responded, locking her pale blue eyes with my own grey ones. She turned her head to wave Katniss away, and I darted back home.

That wasn't the first interaction with the Everdeens, however. Later on that year, Katniss enrolled into the dilapidated three room building we called school. She sat alone in the back row, chewing at the end of her pencil in concentration while reading through water damaged books the Capitol deemed okay for the districts to teach their kids with. Most of them were district issued textbooks that hadn't been replaced in a few dozen years that spoke propaganda every other page, but it wasn't like the children knew any better. Gale nudged his elbows into my ribs whenever Katniss passed by us during recess time, telling me a horrifyingly gushy new tale about how she picked her nose during morning announcements or wore a pretty ribbon in her hair that day or whatever. His schoolboy crushes weren't something to be shocked about, as I knew he'd choose a new girl to gush over in a week. In the future, I knew that he was supposed to be apart of a love triangle with the baker's son, Peeta Mellark, but that kind of drama seemed so unlikely given everything I knew about my brother.

Over by the crooked iron merry-go-round were the blond haired blue eyed kids from the merchant section, the unsaid rich kids. Maybe Peeta was one of the loud boys spinning round and round in circles, but it wasn't like I really paid attention during first day assembly and could match names to each chubby face.

That was a telling sign of my laziness more than anything, as there were only forty kids per class. It wasn't like it could be too hard to memorize all their distinct features.

"I thought you didn't like 'ring around the rosie,'" I shoved Gale's ribs back. He responded with a quiet oomph noise.

He rubbed at his side angrily. "Yeah, 'cause the song sucks! Why?"

With a smirk, I pointed my finger at Katniss' current location - singing 'ring around the rosie' with a bunch of other girls by the hopscotch section.

Sure enough, he began crushing on some other classmate the next week.

The next year, Gale decided to skip school for a mysterious project he refused to tell anybody about. Anybody but me, of course. He wanted to go out to the border and throw rocks at the twenty foot electric fence to "vent out some anger" from his irritations for Peacekeepers. Apparently, a fight had broken out by the Hob the day prior, resulting in Peacekeepers taking action way too far and shooting both aggressors. Because I knew the electric fence, according to the story of 'The Hunger Games' from my previous life, was barely on, I let him go without a hassle. The teacher didn't even notice his absence, too busy teaching addition and subtraction to rowdy kids.

He returned late at night, when our parents were worried half to death at his apparent status as a missing person.

"It worked!" He burst out, climbing through our bedroom window and most definitely scaring me awake. Rory and Vick slept in our parents' room, while Gale and I were crammed in our own little bedroom upstairs. Well. It was what used to be the attic, but the less amount of people in one room, the better. I had always found myself needing more solitude than most.

I rose from bed, slamming a hand over his mouth. "Shhh! Don't wake Rory and Vick! And what worked?"

He grinned sheepishly at his outburst, but still remained extremely eager when he handed me a stinky pile of sticky fur. "A rabbit. A rabbit! Apparently, the fences aren't actually electric or maybe they are but don't turn on, so I went past the border and found a really sharp stick and then this rabbit appeared by my feet so I stabbed it really quick because I was afraid that it'd run away and - !"

The door slammed open. "Gale!" Mom cried out. "My goodness, when we heard your voice... you're here!"

Downstairs, Rory and Vick woke up, as noticed by the subsequent crying. I scooted away from her blabbering to check on the twins downstairs.

In the end, the Gale decided to lie about his adventures and why he was carrying around a dead animal. What went unsaid was that if our parents knew about him venturing beyond the district's borders and illegally hunting, they'd be shot dead to make a statement. If they remained in the dark... well, then it'd just be us two getting shot in the head. Or brutally whipped and therefore permanently scarred.

I went with him the next day, a pulse of fear pounding through my heart as we through the wire spurred fence in the mountains. Since District Twelve was set throughout what had been called Appalachia in my previous life (or was this the future? Had Suzanne Collins effectively retold the world events of the future? Had I been reborn five hundred years ahead?), I remembered there to be copperheads, porcupines, black bears, and brown recluses roaming through the nature. All the danger created a nerve wracking thrill through my blood, knowing that it was a fine line to walk between rebellious against the Capitol and just plain stupid while in the wild.

We challenged each other to climb trees faster, dodge through anthills with resounding agility exercises, and track down prey without making a sound. Soon enough, we missed school at least once a week in exchange for teaching ourselves how to hunt, run, and hide from all manners of predator and prey. Our parents never asked about why we returned home with cuts and bruises and dirt coating underneath our fingernails, but they shared a knowing look. We never talked about how we were able to come home every Friday (Friday was our school skip day) with bound up game hidden underneath our shirts, but Rory and Vick's eagerness for high-calorie meats more than made up their furtive and worried glances.

It was a glorious day in the late autumn that year when we discovered a river winding up to a small lake up high in the mountains. The water was shockingly cold, but temperature was ignored in favor of Gale dunking me straight off a mossy ledge and into the lake. For a split second, while surrounded by icy waters, a fear washed over me that I'd never be able to resurface and that Gale would have to somehow explain to mom and dad and Rory and Vick how we ventured beyond the borders and how I met my untimely death underneath the surface and - !

I pumped my legs upwards, emerging from my thoughts of drowning. Of course I could swim, having been on a high school swim team in my previous life (and the damned book club, where I fell in love with the all too familiar words of 'The Hunger Games,' and isn't it interesting to look at me now?). "Come on loser, jump in! It's nice and cold!"

Gale, though, did not know how to swim. I had forgotten that little fact in the haze of the moment, until my brother hadn't resurfaced from his crashing dive. After a moment's panic, I inhaled a gut breaking breath and went under, noting that opening my eyes under water didn't hurt in mountain freshwater. Near the bottom of the lake, tangled amidst waving black lake plants, was my twin brother. He opened his mouth to screech 'Help!' but only bubbles exited. Of course I understood his message and made him grab on to my waist so I could tug him back to the riverbank.

Because he was a stupid big brother, he forced himself to go back in the lake just minutes after his near-drowning spell. Apparently it wasn't "manly" to not know how to swim, even though basically no one in the district could, anyway.

Our jaunts in the forbidden woods led us to discover our natural skills. Gale became skilled with a bow and arrow carved from broken off twigs - weaponry I had carved. While woodworking wasn't an option of a profession in the Seam or the merchants section, it _was_ in the Hob. While the Hob was indeed a black market, it also served a secondary purpose for finding items at cheaper costs when merchants or business owners wanted to save on money. Gale gave mom extra squirrels, frogs, and bunches of huckleberries, while I offered her knick knacks of carved wooden toy animals, bits of easy to make household items like cups and utensils, and bunches of rope. It wasn't as sturdy as store bought rope, but tightly weaving together flattened strings of bark and ivy branches held similar strength and flexibility to regular rope. Again, she never questioned where we managed to get ahold of these supplies, only thanking us very quietly when our meals grew longer and bigger than before from our hunting and her increased sales.

The odd thought of being selected for the Hunger Games did pass through my mind at one point, but I dismissed it before it had fully formed. After all, future-Gale hadn't been picked in his full six years with his forty two future tesserae, so why would I? The brutal games would be disbanded and the rule of the capitol would be completely disbanded by the time Gale and I became adults, anyway, so it didn't really seem to matter all that much to me.

Perhaps it was cruel to just casually dismiss the blood sports, but I knew the future, and it looked bright enough. The Girl on Fire killing President Snow and Coin, resulting in District Eight's rebellion leader to take the mantle for the country - I distinctly remembered that leader to be a courageous middle-aged black lady who had her head screwed on right - so any movements I made had the possibility of changing that bright future. Gale hadn't had a twin sister in the future I knew of, so hopefully nothing majorly different was going to happen to the second uprising.

The next year, a tiny autumn haired girl enrolled into school. Her name was Primrose Everdeen and was a student in the class I had become a Teacher's Assistant for. In the same classroom were also Rory and Vick, whose mischievous and spritely little faces became known as the Terrible Twins. I suspected ADHD from how awful their attention spans were, but the class teacher, Miss Milligan, and I were able to knock back their childish pranks and outbursts into line.

Primrose, or "Prim," was a sweet darling with more brains than most. I could see why Katniss treasured her precious sister so much. A whole rebellion was sparked from this puny child, and here I was helping her with her science homework.

The science coursework wasn't in depth enough for people to suddenly invent nuclear weapons to bomb the Capitol, of course, but it still was extremely dumbed down, even for the poorest district like ours. Thousands of scientific and mathematics trivia flew through my mind, but I'd never be able to put it to use, except for maybe bomb-making for the coal mines. Except I was pretty sure that the Capitol supplied the explosives, not that the citizens made them.

With that in mind, I wondered how on earth Mrs. Everdeen was able to become the Head Healer, then decided I probably didn't want to know.

Because of the new teaching position (unpaid, sadly enough, but definitely assured that I'd acquire the position of a teacher by the time I became of age and take the elderly Miss Milligan's spot), I wasn't able to hunt with Gale on our skip day anymore. He didn't get mad, but his mood noticeably soured as the weeks passed by.

And everything soured when a good majority of the men from the Seam died in a huge explosion when Gale and I turned eleven. Our father, Blaise Hawthorne, being among the men who risked their lives for the nation's coal. The stress induced mom to start a premature birthing, as she had been around eight months pregnant with her fifth child. I didn't remember Gale mentioning anymore siblings besides Rory and Vick in the movies, so perhaps it was a new development from my presence or something I had missed in the books. Either way, the new baby was going to add stress to our lives.

Mrs. Everdeen was too pre-occupied mourning the loss of her husband, so Gale, a midwife I didn't know the name of, and I helped mom for the birth. It was a miracle that she was able to recover and stand back on her feet just moments after the birthing was done and a cleaned up baby girl cried in my arms, but our family needed the money now that dad was gone.

I admired her strength, her will to trudge on for her family. Because of this, Gale started skipping more and more school to hunt and gather more food, while I brought Posy to class with me so mom could continue her search for better paying work while unhindered.

Mom eventually found work as a washer for the richer merchants, cleaning their linens and scrubbing their homes clean. Stress lines built onto her beautiful face, and her hands became mottled with cuts and bruises from her heavy handed job, but it kept the family afloat until Gale learned how to hunt bigger game.

The day he lugged back home an entire white spotted fawn was the night before our first Hunger Games. We tried to keep a normal conversation throughout dinner, not wanting to even talk about the haunting topic.

"You cooked the deer very well," I complimented mom. "Since when did we have salt?"

She laughed off the question, continuing the false peace of the night to let our little siblings have one last happy memory if we were to be picked for that year.

Gale ended up revealing that he made a new friend, later in our room.

"Her name's Katniss, and she also uses a bow and arrow," he whispered across the distance of our rickety beds. "I thought her name was 'Catnip' at first because she kinda mumbled her introduction when we ran into each other."

What went unsaid was that he had replaced me as his hunting partner. It hurt a lot more than expected, as I knew that teaching was a better suited profession to me. Perhaps I was just childishly jealous over Gale making a new friend when I had been his friend since birth. We were twins and had never been separated for any reason for more than a day.

"I'm glad," I instead chose to say, swallowing away my jealousy. "It's good that she also knows how to hunt. Hey, I betcha she's waaay better at a bow than you are."

"Hey!"

* * *

The skies were clear and unnaturally blue in District Twelve on the sixty-eighth annual Hunger Games, not quite reflecting the spirit of the people. The day of the reaping was always set on the fourth of July, which the date held more cultural significance in the country's past than it did now. In America, it had been a day of celebration. In Panem, it became a day of mourning. Our family hadn't had to attend the reaping day ceremony as no one of our family was of age, but now mom had to stand in the back of the guarded groups of children in front of the Justince Building square. My skin was scrubbed till it was unnaturally shiny and clean, showing my tanned olive skin and the splash of freckles running from cheek to cheek. Braids were customary among women, but I liked to keep mine short and just below my jawline, despite mom's protests. She did try her best to flatten it down and smear it down with water, but I bet that by the end of the ceremony, it'd mess itself up somehow.

"I forgot about today," Vick murmured into my ear when I picked him up into my arms. The seven year old boy hugged my midsection tight and I kissed his mess of curly black hair. The more rambunctious twin, Rory, rammed himself straight into my side and began sniffling.

"You're going to get snot all over her new dress," Gale reminded, gently leading the twins away to mom, who smiled bitterly by the door, Posy wrapped in a long scarf to her chest. For the first time in forever, she remained quiet on the solemn walk to the Justice Building, only slightly babbling and drooling against mom's chest.

I held Vick's hand while walking while Gale took Rory's. When we had to separate into our age and gender sections, I kissed each of the twins' cheeks, Posy's soft forehead, and gave mom and jerky hug. There were tears in everybody's eyes except for innocent baby Posy, gently giggling at her pudgy fingers.

"See ya later," I nodded at Gale, who held less assurance than I did about the day's events. He nodded back in our secret twin language, now relaxed. If I was confident neither of us were getting picked, then we weren't. It was that simple.

A willowy woman wearing a bright pink dress covered in plastic bubbles and a large wig the shape of a smooth magenta sphere bounced up on stage - Effie Trinket. And then came my first introduction to Haymitch Abernathy, the only living victor of District Twelve and the sole resident of the Victor's Village. He had won the second Quarter Quell, the fiftieth Hunger Games, at the age of sixteen. While the reruns playing around the merchants section avoided talking about his game as much as possible, I knew the truth of what had happened. He had used the arena field to his advantage and gotten his entire family killed off for it. Now, he lived as an infamous drunkard, the main source of income for Ripper back at the Hob, who supplied all the illegal types of alcohol. I wasn't sure how Ripper got his hands on alcohol made in other districts, but I suspected the man had a distiller in his backyard that the Peacekeepers kept a blind eye to.

The victor had stringy blond hair and storm colored eyes (so he followed the descriptions from the film? But Gale looked nothing like a younger Liam Hemsworth), and drunkenly swaggered on stage beside Effie, hunched over and a glazed look in his eyes. I felt a brief flash of pity for the man, but diverted my attention to the screen hologrammed to the front of the Justice Building starting to play the annual reaping day ceremony film. It began with the classic war propaganda obviously written by the war's winners and ending with a short sequence of last year's games. Mom had forbidden us all to watch any of the gruesome Hunger Games films, but Gale and I, naturally, sneaked over to a hide in the alley facing the front of a technology applications shop, where they showed each game in a cycle day and night. Last year, according to rumors spread by Madge, the mayor's daughter in the year below us, the victor of the sixty-seventh Hunger Games had been a real hunk. Augustus Braun from district one. The name rang a bell in my head, but he didn't ultimately seem to be important to the future events.

"And now, it's time to pick out this year's female tribute!" Effie exclaimed. I shook myself out of my stupor, now needing to pay attention. While it wasn't like I was about to be picked, I thought to remember every tribute's names in my upcoming years to pay them respect.

The Capitol woman delicately picked out a flimsy piece of paper and the tension in the air seemed to thicken. No one wanted to be picked. No one wanted to be subjected to blood sports. No one wanted that for themselves, their children, their friends, their family.

"Annemarie Hatters!" Effie shouted, wearing a vibrant smile.

I breathed out a sigh of relief alongside all the other girls who didn't get picked. Annemarie, however, a medium height and wiry blonde girl from the seventeens section, trembled on the walk towards the stage. Her coloring and well tailored clothes shouted merchants section, but the expression on her face shouted the terror of death that most people in the Seam wore during the lean winter months, in the imminent threat of starvation. She, however, would not being starving to death. No, with her timid walk and demure stature, she'd be apart of the first blood bath at the Cornucopia.

The crowd of boys stood stock still as Effie reached her hand into the male's section. "Samandriel Hatters!"

Oh god, siblings. While it wasn't the first games featuring siblings as the district's male and female duo, it was always terrible for the parents.

As expected, a woman shrieked in the back section, screaming about how it was unfair both of her kids had been selected. I turned my head to catch Gale looking straight at the ground, fists clenched. In odd twin synchronization, he looked up to meet my eyes. 'Told you,' I mouthed, offering a half-shrug.

Once the reaping ceremony was over, Gale and I walked home, holding Rory and Vick's clammy hands. "One in hundreds," I reminded Gale. "We're not going to get picked. The odds will forever be in our favor," I mimicked a Capitol accent with that catchmark phrase, elbowing his ribs.

He smiled.

Now that we were of age, mom didn't have an excuse to stay at home during the nation wide broadcasts of the games. Parents could take the option to not watch the games if she had children below twelve, but now she was required to turn on our shaky old television set whenever a Peacekeeper knocked on the doors to check all homes that people were watching. If someone's television screen was not on, or if they didn't have one, they'd be escorted to the main town square to watch on the displays. Throughout the first week of the Capitol tour for the tributes, watching was only mandatory for a few hours, as televised training periods and interviews weren't as interesting as being glued to the screen for the actual arena time. Luckily, there was an old woman who stayed in the school building and looked after young children that shouldn't be inside watching the games. The Peacekeepers tolerated this to happen because the old lady probably wasn't in the right mind in the first place to watch the games, being over ninety years old.

One week later, the games began at exactly ten a.m. sharp. Schools were out, careers were optional to go to, and everyone stayed in front of a screen by order of the Peacekeepers and government to watch the "enthralling" blood sports. The sixty-eighth Hunger Game's arena was set in a savanna, where large rocks and grossly twisted trees and large puffs of long yellow grasses. And then - Gale and I leaned closer into the television while mom leaned back, covering Posy's ignorant ears - a loud explosion billowed from a middle sector girl.

"Woo! Did you see that, fellow audience members?!" Came Caeser Flickerman's narration in the background. The screen flickered to his face, where this year he had opted to die it a set of blue and purple stripes, and his tumultuous laugh. "Avril Avergotch from district seven just exploded. It seems to me that her token, a rosewood toy ball, had dropped from her pocket and onto the ground. And everyone knows to not step off the platform during the first sixty seconds! Oh dear!"

The screen cut to a live audience inside a studio from the Capitol filming site, then back to the arena.

In the end, the winner was the male career tribute from district two. He was one hundred eighty pounds and over six feet tall with strong muscles all around, winning by bludgeoning his remaining district mate to death with a spiked mace. It was a brutish, gruesome death, but Gale and I couldn't seem to take our eyes off the blurry television screen that was bound to break any day now.

"Good thing that we're not going to get reaped, right? Blaire?" Gale nudged my side, a rare show of weakness in his voice.

I shook my head. "'Course not, silly."

The next day, we both put our names down to apply for tesserae.

* * *

On the morning of the sixty-ninth Hunger Games reaping ceremony, Gale and I sat in bed longer than usual, unwilling to face the rest of the day.

"We've got four tesserae to our names, now," he blurted out. "That's still a very low percentage to be picked, right?"

"Yes," I assured, washing away the uneasiness in our stomachs.

Since we both had shot up like weeds, mom was forced to tailor her and dad's old clothes for us to wear instead of buying new outfits. She gave me a faded baby pink dress that ended a little below my knees and had a scratchy high color and short sleeves. Gale wore musty brown slacks and a slightly stained cream button up shirt from dad's old stuff.

"When'd you get so tall?" I huffed, poking Gale's shoulders, where the top of my head just barely reached to.

He snorted, cracking a smile despite the current atmosphere. "When'd you get so short? I'm pretty sure Katniss, who's two years younger, is taller than you."

I playfully stuck my tongue out, then reached out to unbutton his collar a level. He looked way too stuffy in high collars.

"Blay-yuh!" Squealed out Posy, ramming straight towards my legs. "It's pink!"

"I swear, you learned to run before learning to walk," I commented, ruffling her patch of chocolate brown hair. "It's time to take a nap now, sweetie."

She resolutely did not want to go to sleep, so all mom could do now was make sure that Posy's eyes were covered throughout the entire reaping ceremony. No need to subject a toddler to that kind of stuff.

Rory and Vick didn't tear up when our family separated ourselves into our proper sections, but they did linger a bit longer than last year, almost making Peacekeepers forcibly break apart our hugs. Gale and I shared a wordless nod yet again as we divvied up. It was a look of assured calm; we were going to be fine. Hawthornes never get picked and never will be picked.

The Hunger Games would end after the third Quarter Quell, anyway. That was just six years away. Rory and Vick hadn't been picked according to the future knowledge during their brief tenure as of-age kids, anyway. We'd be fine. Everyone would be fine.

Effie appeared on stage in yet another glamorous outfit - this time, gold and diamond glittering bands clinking around her arms and legs, sapphire blue hair done in poofy curls, and a white shimmery skintight dress. Oddly enough, this had to be her most normal ensemble in her entire history of being here. She shouted nicely encouraging words that expectedly had no effect on our dull crowd, and let the reaping day film show. This time, at the end, were segments from last years games of the brutal savanna. Those games had been the "ideal" games, where everyone had seemed to be given an equal chance in terms of equipment and landscape knowledge, with fan favorite careers doing most of the bloody slaughtering. Caeser Flickerman had said something about those year's ratings being almost as high as the sixty-fifth Hunger Games featuring Finnick Odair.

"Now, ladies first!" Effie cried out in joy, teetering her way to the female's box of names. She fished out a single slip of paper.

My heart clenched in my chest.

"Blaire Hawthorne!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Dreamers Live to Die Chapter 1**

**I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]**

**Published 2019.12.30**

* * *

"Blaire Hawthorne!" Rang out Effie Trinket's shrill voice.

All the girls in the thirteens section immediately made space for an exit path to the middle line to the stadium.

No.

No. No! Against my will, my feet moved steadily past the crowds, past Gale (I couldn't look at his face), past the front row sections, and onto the rise of the stadium stage. Noise distorted in my ears, the skies shone unnaturally blue, and Effie's strong perfume made me want to vomit all over her perfect little dress and perfect little shoes.

The noise of crying woke me out of my stupor. While Effie announced the boy's name - Yonner Bayaurch, emerging from the eighteens section - little Posy was screaming her head off in the background. She didn't understand what was going on other than that it was bad and mom was leaking a steady stream of tears and little Rory and Vick all the way back there were paler than snow and Gale... I shifted my glance to my brother, and his eyes were wider than saucers.

Yonner forced me to break the heart breaking eye contact when he offered his hand for the customary handshake. His hands were roughly calloused from work in the coal mines, as he was old enough to have started work down below. The main mines had been closed down after the huge explosion two years ago, but there were smaller mines scattered in the north that people were allowed to work in. Those mines, however, were of even worse conditions than the main ones. Therefore Yonner had to have contracted some sort of medical condition from working in there, or was just unnaturally strong. He had coppery red hair and green eyes, which were rare colors for District Twelve. His stocky build spoke of great strength, as did his handshake grip.

"Excellent!" Effie cheered, clasping her hands together. "This concludes the reaping ceremony! My, what a lovely day! Happy Hunger Games, and may the odds be ever in your favor."

A row of Peacekeepers escorted the capitol woman, us two tributes, and an unusually silent Haymitch, who was trailing along the back of the pack. Most years, he blurted out something stupid and collapsed onstage in a drunken stupor.

It was possibly the scariest few minutes of my life while locked alone in a guarded room for the farewell period inside the Justice Building. The fact that my name had been drawn amidst the hundreds of names in the box made me terrified that perhaps Rory or Vick or even Gale would have to face the shift of events that my presence brought. Maybe the future events never mentioned Gale having a twin sister because she had _died_ in one of the games.

The door sprung open after what felt like an eternity, welcoming the familiar tear tracked faces of my family.

"Oh, Blaire," mom cried, hugging me tight to her bosom. "I'm so, so sorry."

Posy was wrapped on her back, fast asleep after wearing herself out from her mini tantrum back during the ceremony. It was for the better, though. Posy's uncontrollable crying would have me bursting into tears, and I didn't want the Capitol to see any shred of weakness from me when I didn't want them to.

She unwrapped her shaking arms for Vick and Rory's turns for hugs. They let the tears fall freely this time.

"You lied," Vick choked. "You big, fat liar."

"You said that you wouldn't get picked last night. Remember?" Rory added, rubbing his eyes furiously.

While they occupied my arms, Gale hugged over them, stuffing my face into his chest. "By the time I get back, you'll be like ten feet tall," I tried joking, but the line came flat.

"I don't care what you do, but you just need to come back. Alright?" He demanded, voice cracking with emotion.

At any other time, I would've teased his voice crack, but the time was too serious. The sixty-ninth games didn't have anybody recognizable, but everyone was a danger.

"I'm not gonna die," I swore, looking him straight in the eye. He startled a bit at my tone. "I'm gonna come back home, no matter how deranged I'll become in the arena. We've got Hawthorne blood, right?"

At that moment, I looked straight at mom, who burst into another round of tear. "Just like your father..."

"Use whatever you've got up your sleeve," Gale struggled to say. "I don't care if you come back with blood on your hands - you just need to come back at all."

I nodded. "It's going to be okay, Gale."

It was so not okay. A pit of dread grew and dredged up anxiety and nerves until I was sure the room just started spinning.

The door burst open. "Time's up!" A Peacekeeper announced, a few more entering the room to rip off the twins' clawing grasps. Posy woke up and began screaming as they were ripped away from me. The heavy door thudded close with finality.

A curious object pressed against my leg, and I looked down to see a small lump in my pocket. Taking it out, it was revealed to be one of my little knick knacks: a wooden carving of an elephant the size of an eraser. Gale must have slipped it into my pocket during our brief farewell for my district token. A thoughtful last gift, as I hadn't expected to prepare a token in the first place. Really, who did?

Gale had once asked what the hell this carving was when I first presented it to our ever growing collection on our shelves back home. Elephants didn't exist in Panem - or at all, anymore - so he thought I had made a new magical creature, like the hippo or the penguin figurines decorating the kitchen.

The second time slot for visitors was occupied by a familiar elderly woman emerging into the room.

I quickly rose up. "Miss Milligan."

She strode over the long meeting room floor and wrapped her thin arms around my shoulders. "Oh, dear. I was looking forward to you taking my position."

That was it. No, "good luck" or "have a nice trip to the afterlife."

"What makes you think I won't come back?" I challenged out of spite.

She tutted and leaned back to fix my messy hair out of my eyes. "Dearie Blaire. I have full confidence that you're intelligent enough to survive the games, but I don't think you'd want to become a teacher anymore once you come back."

I offered her a wane smile. "We'll see."

She pecked my cheek, saying that she'll bid my goodbyes to our class for me, then left.

The third and last visitors, unexpectedly, were the Everdeens. Prim held Katniss' hands warily before approaching me. Their mother, unfortunately, was still suffering from mental problems from the trauma of losing her husband. Mrs. Everdeen's face was blanker than an empty sheet of paper, not a speck of the situation reaching into her mind.

"You were the best teacher I've ever had. Better than Miss Milligan," Prim murmured shyly. Katniss nodded awkwardly, standing back with her mother. "Please come back to become a real teacher this time."

I ruffled her autumn blonde hair, smiling at her affronted look for messing up her perfectly braided hair. "Of course, Prim," I lied. "Don't you worry. I'll even buy everyone at school new pencils and desks and all sorts of colorful playground chalk once I win the games."

She didn't smile at that, but Katniss nodded her head in a jerky thanks, then pushed her family out. It must suck to be the only one responsible for your family, I mused. Gale, mom, and I were the three providers for us Hawthornes, but Katniss had to be her family's sole provider. She was also smart enough to not buy in tesserae, severely limiting her chance to provide enough oil for her household.

I sat there in the lonely meeting room for what seemed like hours, investigating the mahogany furniture and the tiny silver cameras dotting the walls until Effie burst into the room with Yonner in tow.

"Lovely! You're all ready now," she said, ushering me out to greet another squadron of Peacekeepers. "We'll be heading to the cars now, where you'll be taking the train ride to the Capitol!"

A dim sort of amusement flooded my face. "A train?" I extended to Effie, allowing her the opportunity to speak more. It was out of my own best interest for the people in charge of me to invest their energy into keeping me alive as best as possible in the arena, and one way to do that was get Effie, my set crew, and Haymitch to like me. The old drunkard would be a challenge, but he seemed to admire strong and smart tributes; kids that had a chance of making it out alive.

"Oh, it's an absolutely marvelous piece of technology! You two are in for a treat," she recited, leading the way to behind the building, where a fancy black car lay in wait, protected by trucks of Peacekeepers. "Chrystal chandeliers, platinum doorknobs... and the train rides so smoothly it's like flying! We'll arrive at the capital at a rate of two hundred miles per hour."

Riding a car for the first time since my rebirth felt all too much like deja vu, except this time I actually knew what the memories behind the bumpy gravel filled ride had been about. The district twelve escort sat between Yonner and I, acting as a barrier. This was a smart move on her part, as I was almost certain the boy was preparing himself to murder me in cold blood by the way he glared into my soul.

"Chrystal chandeliers?" I inquired, forcing myself to entertain Effie's vibrant self. She wasn't really an annoying person, per se, and I knew she wasn't really a bad woman behind all her outgoing Capitol makeup, but the somberness of the day really didn't make me want to talk to her. She was simply too happy to be tolerable at the moment. "Are there any rainbow colored chandeliers?"

"Oh my! Of course there are, Miss Hawthorne. Can I call you Blaire? Yes? Alright. Of course there are rainbow chandeliers. There's rainbow everything in the Capitol. For example, there's a store on the Famous Blue street off the city center where..."

I droned her out politely, smiling and nodding while contemplating how to get Haymitch's favor. He had been enamored by Katniss and her brave stupidity and skill with a bow. Me? I could hardly glare for the life of me, was only moderately skilled in offensive knife work, and really only held any skill in passive hunting traits, like tracking, hiding, climbing, foraging, and making elaborately knotted traps. Well. When listed out, it sounded pretty good, but the usefulness of my skills all depended on the format of the arena. If it followed the style of a deciduous forest range, great. Problem solved. If it was anything other than a forest or mountain range, I'd be toast. My age wasn't the prime type for sponsors and my type of mean wit wasn't built to be catered towards Capitol citizens.

As a developing thirteen year old, no one in their right mind would want to sponsor me based on any kind of beauty or sexiness (unless they were pedophiles). I did find myself to be considerably attractive, with a cute nose and cheeks splashed with just enough freckles and thickly lashed light grey eyes that suited my round face especially well (hey, I could be arrogant about my looks, right?), but no thirteen year old could seduce a large enough crowd. My best option was to be an underdog. Everybody liked an underdog. Pleasant surprises and all that.

The fact that the youngest tribute to ever win the games had been a fourteen year old Finnick Odair did not help my self confidence in the slightest.

Haymitch hated his life because he was forced to bond with two children before seeing them inevitably sent to their deaths, right? All I had to do was convince him I had the slim chance of winning over the larger and stronger framed Yonner, to make him pull in enough sponsors to at least provide enough support in the arena.

Or I could pull a Johanna. But no, I didn't want to be known as unhinged in the end. The Capitol would eat it up and it wasn't like I was planning on keeping my morality intact out on the field, but being likeable sounded easier than acting out weirdly timid personas.

Crowds parted in the dirt packed streets out of respect. Familiar faces of neighbors, classmates, and Hob vendors zoomed by as the car picked up more speed away from the only town I had really known in Panem.

"Where's our mentor?" Grumbled out Yonnor, interrupting Effie's extended speech on rainbow products.

"Oh, he's, well. He's a bit of a drinker, so they already brought him to the train to rest in private quarters," our escort informed uneasily.

Yonnor scowled. "So he's useless, then. We're just going to die out there like everyone else, since we've got the shittiest drunkard of a mentor out of all twelve districts."

I wanted to tell him to stop talking, but he kept on ranting about the terrible fate of his circumstances until the Peacekeepers in the front of the car turned their seats back to point a gun at his head.

"This is a warning," growled the Peacekeeper. "Don't speak ill of your situation. It is an honor by the Capitol to be chosen for the games."

Yonnor wisely held his tongue this time.

The next half hour to the train station was devoid of conversation. The racing view of the tall cedars and pines I had grown up next to remained a dying comfort as the car and Peacekeeper trucks pulled into a small station leading to a long metal snake of a train. The dividers between compartments were barely visible with thin black lines of space, and the sleekness of the metal made the sight practically blinding against the sun's reflection.

"Amazing," I commented hollowly to Effie, who bounced back to her usual vibrant self.

"Of course, of course. Inside, there are refreshments - I hope you don't eat like savages like the usual district twelve crowd - that you can help yourselves to. I'll make Haymitch get out of his private quarters to welcome you two." She bounded into the train before us, her sapphire blue curls bouncing behind her. Because I didn't feel safe around Yonner, I made him head in first to watch my own back, an action that he grumbled something about having proper manners.

The door slid shut as soon as we were all gathered on, and a tell tale rumble signaled lift off. Still, the ride remained remarkably smooth. We walked towards an open door leading into an extravagant lounge room.

"Holy shit," Yonnor gasped, taking in the sights. I had to agree with him, finally realizing that the richness of the Capitol hadn't been exaggerated. In fact, it may have been under-explained, as shown by the decadent setting before us. Glimmering glass bowls displayed portions of pastries, jellies, jams, over a dozen types of breads, crisp and still wet fruit, platters of cheese, cured meats, and more. Off to the side was a table of alcoholic drinks set in large colorful prismatic bottles in a manner of funny geometric designs. The age of consent and alcohol and other legal adult activities in Panem was sixteen, so only Yonnor would be able to take anything from the section (legally, that is). Haymitch probably had his own private bar in his room.

Since there was no point in refusing to eat out of spite or hatred of the governmental regimes, Yonnor and I came to a wordless agreement that this lounge area was a truce area to enjoy the delicacies.

He piled nearly a little bit of everything on several plates before sitting down on a mahogany seat by a window, but I just opted for one plate of grapes and cheeses. Dairy products weren't imported to or from district twelve, and it had been a while since I had tasted the sharp bitterness of my classic favorites gouda and mozzarella.

A door opened ahead, revealing a haggard Effie dragging a stumbling Haymitch.

"Hey, lay off me," the man snapped, staggering into a table. "I can handle myself."

The escort threw her hands in the air, fuming. "I've got to talk to the drivers. But don't think I won't force you to talk to your tributes!"

After she left, Haymitch groaned and walked with an awkward gait to the chair in front of me. Yonnor moved himself to his diagonal seat, obviously wanting to hear what our mentor had to offer.

"Look, guys, I'm just here for the refreshments. So go off an enjoy yourselves before your inevitable fate met and the end of a knife," he slurred, grabbing a sloppy hand to the inside of his vest pocket, where a silver whiskey vial had been hiding. He took a long swig and burped.

"You - !" Yonnor stood up, fists clenched white. "You're supposed to help us, sponsor us! What kind of mentor are you?!"

The alcoholic giggled. "I told you, I'm just here for the refreshments. Want something to drink? The orange bottle o'er there's usually the best," he slurred even heavier, swaying from side to side before flat out passing out onto the floor.

Great. Just great.

Yonnor stormed back off to his corner to stare glumly at his food. Haymitch, despite imbibing copious amounts of alcohol everyday, was still a rather skinny man. Resolute in the belief that winning Haymitch's favors was the best way to win the games, I took the man's ankles and literally dragged the man away. My tribute mate may have sent me weird looks, but really, what was the harm in that? He was already prepared to take me out at a moment's notice in the arena, so it wasn't like I should even try getting a comfortable relationship with him. Our mentor, however, was the only one capable of actually helping me once in the arena, so it was best to help him.

All the private quarters were labelled, so it wasn't too hard to drag the man into his room down the main hallway. Because I didn't have the upper body strength to lift a full grown one hundred fifty to one hundred sixty pound man with my barely teenaged arms, he stayed on the fluffy carpeted ground, snoring away the day.

A flash of metal caught my eye. A silver knife the size of my forearm lay half-way hidden underneath an askew pillow on his silken bed covers. Even though it may have been rude to wander around his private quarters without his express permission, I couldn't help but reach for the knife an slight wonder. It had intricate gold carvings in the bladed edges, all trailing down to an ivory and jade handle. This knife appeared too flashy for Haymitch to own.

"It's pretty, ain't it?"

Immediately reacting out of shock, I expertly spun the perfectly balanced knife in my nimble fingers while whirling around, definitely prepared to stab the voice that made me startle.

Haymitch, still on the ground, jerked his arms up defensively. "Whoa. Easy there, tiger. I like your reflexes, but don't aim 'em at me."

This was the perfect time for a knife trick to impress him. I flipped the knife up, letting it just barely graze the ceiling, before catching it back in my hand without looking. It took years of nasty cuts and a particularly vicious squirrel (long story, don't ask) to pull that off, but it did make our mentor raise his eyebrows.

"Like that fire in you. Maybe you'll make it longer than the other tributes I usually get stuck with," he grumbled, lifting himself off the ground in an unsteady sway.

I threw the knife into the wall, noticing the small crack forming in the plaster. This was all for show, of course, as I really actually had terrible aim with anything long distance to save my life. But Haymitch didn't need to know that I hadn't meant for that knife to head in that direction... I just needed him to start paying attention to me.

"I can track, forage, climb trees and any rock surface, and tie knots and traps. While I realize that my strengths rely in passive abilities, you can help me choose which area to hone better in preparation of the games."

An unnamed emotion flickered in his eyes. "What about that knife just now?" He swaggered backwards, against the wall. "Can you - can you do impressive tricks with knives, better than the one just now?"

No.

"Depends on your idea of 'impressive,'" I instead smirked, propping a hand on my hip.

He barked out a laugh. "Hah! I can use some o' your arrogance. Bother me tomorrow. I need to sleep off all this drinking."

He tone was more resolute and sober than before, so I graciously ducked out his room to find my own private quarters.

Once there, I changed out of my faded pink dress, itchy white socks, and plain brown leather shoes for soft silk slippers and body hugging yet comfortable nylon sleeveless shirt and pants, all in varying shades of olive green. A high quality hologram set rested on the cream colored walls, so I flipped it on out of curiosity, only to be met with sudden bouts of gore.

So, they played the previous Hunger Games on the train to the Capitol. Typical.

Needless to say, I turned it off and tried taking a nap.

By the time I had woken up, the clothes strewn on the ground had been taken away, possibly forever, and my small wooden elephant laid on the bedstand. Perhaps avoxes had entered the room when I was unaware. The idea of people coming and going in a room where I rested was bothersome for reasons not needed to be explained.

The idea of heading into an arena designed to kill off innocent children sickened me to my core, but I didn't know what worried me more: the idea of trying to survive no matter the cost, or the loss of my sanity for being forced to play an immoral game.

I decided on both and called it a day.

Haymitch and Effie were sitting in the main lounge area, where the treats from before now turned into a much larger, heavier styled feast with large cuts of pork, bowls of potato products that smelled a little off, glasses of strange creams and spreads, and much more. I elected on choosing a meat heavy dinner and sat right in front of the two adults.

"Ah, at least she can use her manners, Haymitch!" Effie scolded, swatting Haymitch's hands before he could reach for the steak bits with his bare hands. "Try to set a proper example for your district!"

"It's alright, Effie," I soothed. "Let the man enjoy his last days in the relative quiet of the train. Don't alcoholics hate loud noises like cities?"

He cheered to that statement, propping a shoe-free foot on the low set coffee table between us. "Preach. Thanks, sweetie."

"Oh? So you're actually talking to the tributes, now?" Effie sniffed pointedly.

"Don't worry," I assured sarcastically. "He was drunk the entire time, no weird new changes."

Haymitch shouted. "Ha hah! I like this girlie. She's got _spunk_!"

So, being generally antagonizing to him but in the funniest way possible? Sure, I could deal with that. "I'd hope so, as I'm prepared to do anything, _absolutely anything_, to return to my family alive."

He belched, waving his glass over the table. "Even at the cost of your humanity?"

My voice darkened. I needed to sell this act as much as possible. "_Anything_."

His eyes glazed over and that was when the final obstacle had been secured. Effie clasped her hands together and squealed in delight when Haymitch propped his glass down and relaxed back into his cushioned chair.

"We can't make you desirable because of your age, and you can't pull the intelligence act because of your age, and it's not like you have strength or skill for weaponry in spades to win over the audience," he said, mulling everything over.

"An underdog," Effie suggested. "Everyone loves an underdog!"

Except for President Snow, who hated underdogs. Or maybe he just hated everything period. It was hard to tell, really.

Haymitch snapped his fingers. "Yes, an underdog. But we need a secondary trait. You can't only rely on being an underdog character, as you're too snarky to be the typical little guy."

"My resounding wit?" I dragged on, drumming my fingers together.

He shook his head. "No, too young to be a classic comedian. I think the cute card would work well, but you've got to butter up to the audience a lot more than you might feel comfortable with."

"I will literally consider everything just to win and be able to see my family again," came the expected dry retort. "Lay it all on me."

* * *

At the beginning of the next day, the hours filled with careful planning and impromptu acting lessons ("stop being so snarky!" "shut it, old man!"), the train cut through the final stop of the Rocky mountains. Or, well, they weren't called that _now_, but they had been called that when Panem used to be the United States of America. It was weird to think that the equivalent of the nation's main headquarters for national domination and dictatorship was Salt Lake City, Utah. Location wise. Fucking Utah.

Yonnor emerged out his room when the tunnels through the mountains cleared for the view to the lively city of the Capitol.

"Finally started drinking five barrels of moonshine rather than ten?" He snarked, seeing Haymitch act mostly sober during breakfast time. We carefully did not exchange any meaningful glances, knowing the boy would catch them. It would soon not become a secret that the mentor was favoring me over him, and I wasn't eager on letting that happen in an area like a passenger train.

"What, you respecting me now or somethin'? I always start the day with a healthy swig of twenty barrels," Haymitch slurred out, spreading a grossly thick layer of marmalade on his toast. Oh dear. His hangover must be worse than we had initially thought.

"Oh, Yonnor, Blaire, you should observe the sights of the city," Effie called out from the window seats, frantically waving a hand over. I noted with dumb absent-mindedness that each finger had three gold plated rings in the gaudiest display of jewelry my eyes had ever been privy to.

The city hadn't been done justice to in the film, that much could be said. Instead of plain concrete and stone formulaic skyscrapers, this utter metropolis held a rich vibrancy to it only discovered when I had visited Hong Kong and Tokyo in my previous life. Different levels of buildings used odd geometric sequences for its tinted windows, some buildings were set in highly saturated neon colors formed in seemingly structurally impossible formations, and the odd jumble of Roman architecture such as Corinthian columns lined plasticky and tacky shops along smooth, mica mixed concrete streets. Boisterous was a polite term for the color scheme, but the lively culture so easily displayed in contrast to District Twelve, even compared to its rich merchants section, held everything against it. Effie's funky Capitol accent would be heard from all over the city, which I was looking forward to the most, if tributes were given the opportunity to wander through the metropolis. Probably not, but at least it'd be fun to talk to my stylists.

"They... they live like _this_? When half the kids back home are on the brink of starvation?" Yonnor whispered against the glass of the window.

Haymitch sucked in a breath and patted the boy's shoulder. "Keep that information to yourself, kid. Your best shot at winning is making the Capitol like you."

The copper haired boy offered an unconvincing smile, but it was an improvement from looking constantly angry at the world. Angry rightfully so, but brains mattered over brawns in the upcoming week.

"We'll be taking you to the Remake Center, which is right next to the Victor's Squire and Training Centor, so you'll be right at home within just one block," Effie informed us simply as the train lulled to a stop and thousands of chattering fans awaited outside the doors. "Remember to smile at the people and all the cameras!"

Yonnor snorted and I immediately shoved on a bright smile as the doors slid open to reveal us to the world.

I knew from previous games that from here on out, we'd be televised every minute of our time in the capitol, from the doors of the welcoming train opening to the very last heartbeat in the arena. Perhaps spending the most amount of time during the opening ceremony, interviews, and a brief interlude over the training sessions, but that was all unimportant when the reality that I was about to be sent to a slaughterhouse in just a week. The safety of Katniss' inner thoughts from her book narrative was calming enough, but she had been in the relative familiarity of a deciduous forest. This year, it was probably going to be a war zone due to the number sixty-nine. While none of the residents alive in Panem may have remembered the infamous sex jokes behind the number, the number itself still held a weird amount of significance among street gurus and "list of favorite numbers."

Strange American cultures of the far past societies slipped into modern culture through centuries of heavy handed use and forgotten stories, which really hit home that this was a futuristic dystopian society.

Our escort to the Remake Center was made brief by keeping to ourselves and smiling the entire short walk to the pink cotton candy colored building in the shape of a light bulb. Upon entrance, a group of three strangely colored stylists immediately took my wrists and dragged me off into a different room. Effie chimed a jolly "good luck" before the door locked.

The three members of my personal prep team announced themselves as Flavius, Venia, and Octavia - classic Latin inspired names popular in the Capitol. I struck conversation with the three of them while they focused on waxing and scrubbing away dirt on my lower body in order to gain a sense of familiarity with them.

"Have any tributes refused to strip naked during the prepping?" I inquired, wincing at the painfully hot wax applied to my recently hairy legs.

Venia guffawed in exasperation. "Oh dear, absolutely yes! In fact, the girl we worked on two years ago was so painfully shy with her body she refused to let us even touch her torso! A nightmare case, I tell you."

Octavia, a woman with mint green skin and strange gems embedded into her temples, nodded exuberantly. "Ah yes, yes. In fact, you're the nicest and most compliant tribute we've had the pleasure of working with so far! Good grief!"

Flavius rubbed a lavender smelling lotion on my legs that was speckled with shimmery glitter bits while sighing in their gossiping. "If it's anything we hate, it has to be whiny customers."

I laughed along, nodding cheerfully. "Of course, that makes sense. The fullest extent of your talents would doubtlessly create a perfect human being."

Octavia pressed a hand against her heart. "Oh, you warm my heart, darling."

It took just over an hour to finish cleaning and pruning my body to perfection ("you're young yet, doesn't need too much waxing and facials") before I was sent into an adjacent room with an eagerly awaiting stylist.

She announced herself to be Potentia, and had been working with District Twelve for the past five years. Since she was not the genius that was Cinna, a scant thirty minutes later, I emerged into a waiting area wearing a gross depiction of my home - namely, a dress made of rocks. Potentia didn't use actual coal because the structure of the material wasn't compatible with whatever design she wanted weaved into the heavy duty linens of the lumpy, unflattering dress. Sadly enough, I looked better off than Yonnor, who was only wearing a simple white loincloth, a fake coal chest-plate, and a black helmet covering most of his notable facial features.

"Wow, how sexy."

"Oh, shut it," He snapped, his neck flushing red. "At least you still look like a person."

He had a point there.

Effie and Haymitch creaked a door open to our side, then our mentor immediately burst into giggles.

"Ah, it just gets worse the more I look at it!" He exclaimed, holding his sides.

Effie's face became strained. "Well, it's certainly better than five years ago, remember? Poor dears wearing nothing but coal dust and miner's hats. Not even a speck of makeup on their pale faces."

"Haa... true, oh gosh. This is still hilarious. Not terrible enough to diminish your chance for sponsors, though. Just the right amount of funky to pull some interest in. Potentia and her apprentice really pulled through this year."

Yonnor buried what was left of his face in his hands. "When does the chariot ceremony start?"

* * *

Seeing how we were the loser district, nobody came to interact with us during the small waiting period on the bottom floor of the Remake Center, where the back waiting area was a glorified stables. All the horses were surprisingly well trained, not even needing reigns to guide their actions.

"Selective breeding," I pointed out to Yonnor who was petting our coal black horses' manes. "The Capitol breeds the perfect horses through something called selective breeding."

He raised an eyebrow. "Oh, right. You were a teacher's assistance for a while, weren't you."

"And you a coal miner," I shot back, unwilling to provide any edge. He grinned with too many teeth.

A blast of music spreads through the air in what I presumed to be trumpets as our mentor, stylists, and escort step back to the sides in order for the doors to open and the ceremony to start.

"Smile!" Effie reminded as we climbed onto the jet black chariot drawn by our four tame horses. And then the massive doors ahead of the chariots swing wide open and a cheering crowd began to reveal itself.

District one went first, then two, then three, and eventually it was our turn. The horses trot along at a faster pace than expected, rounding up the entire pack of twenty four tributes shown.

The dazzling city lights and humongous crowds of people were overwhelming at first, but the more my resolve to win and go home strengthened, the more calm I felt in my security to charm over the people of the Capitol and of Panem as a whole. The gamemakers tried to create easier situations for fan favorites, after all, as they brought up the viewing rates and general economic flow of the citizens.

I waved with all the glamour and glitter shining through my eyes, blowing little fairy kisses at the people. Perhaps Gale would find my ensemble hilarious, I thought, and suddenly my smile widens at the thought of my twin.

Finally, through the pulsating in my head from the rapid beats of funky electronic music booming overhead in speakers, the chariots aligned themselves around the City Circle in front of Snow's mansion. The music cut to a close and President Snow emerged from his balcony. And intense amount of hatred fueled threw me at the simple sight of his face and overly swollen lips. The national anthem turned on at the end of his propaganda filled speech concerning the ultimate power of the Capitol and the history behind the games and the amazing new sport created out of a well earned lesson. And then the parade ended like it started, with fast paced jaunt all the way to a different building, the Training Center. It's massive new doors shut closed and Yonnor sighed in relief at the end of the whole spectacle.

"Stupid helmet," he mumbled, ripping it off his head.

The layout of the Training Center's ground floor remained identical in shape and structure to the previous Remake Center, down to the lime green doors for the horse stables and the electric blue ceiling tiles. Even though partnering up and forming alliances was a solid way to win the games, it most likely would put an ever larger target on my back if I were to talk to the other tributes milling towards the elevators to reach their floor. That was because in a group, the other members would most likely be willing to form the consensus decision that I would be the first to go, throat slit in the middle of the night, due to my young age and slight stature as an underfed barely teenage girl.

Unwilling to share an elevator with other districts, Yonnor and I waited until we were the last to go to ride the elevator alone.

"How was your prep team?" I drawled out, leaning against the glass walls of the luxury elevator box. Its design held a futuristic decoration and usage of glass, but the elevator overall appeared to function like the average one did back during the twenty-first century. I supposed that people were to busy killing each other using bigger and better nuclear technology rather than investing time into efficient travel systems. Seriously, those aircrafts had better not run on fossil fuels, or else I'd hate President Snow even more for just messing up the environment.

Yonnor shivered. "Ugh, it was horrible. They literally poured burning hot wax on my armpits and ripped all my hair out for the sake of 'perfection.'" He kicked the elevator door. "Capitol idiots, the lot of 'em."

While true, it remained the wise decision to not voice that thought aloud. Especially while _in_ the Capitol.

"Floor: District Twelve," the elevator chimed monotonously, then revealed a floor with wonders only compared to something Tony Stark would build over the weekend.

We stepped out onto lush carpeted floors, heads spinning to catch every minuscule detail in the crystal ornaments of the multi-tiered chandeliers, the swirling window panes providing a perfect view of the bright neon colors of the city down below, expensive woods for the cushioned furniture, and marble decorations atop every table top and surface.

"At least I'll die happy," he muttered, at which I couldn't help but laugh at.

Effie, now in a bombastic new change of clothes, walked into the living area from an upstairs door. "Ah, yes! Our lovely tributes. Like what you see? Victors get to live in this type of luxury for the rest of their lives, and even get to visit the capitol for the games or other special occasions like their victory tour and whatnot."

As if to diminish the effect she was aiming to achieve, Haymitch stumbled out of the kitchen holding a bottle of brown viscous liquid in each hand, more red-cheeked than a newborn baby.

"Drinks!" He cackled. "We get drinks! I get drunk. Woo-hoo!"

Oh dear. His absolute drunkenness probably meant he still didn't really believe in his tributes. I mentally prepared myself to not get any sponsors during the games.

"Time for you to go to bed, old man," I sighed fondly. "Come on, brush your teeth and wash your face. Or just dump your head in a bucket of suds - your hair could really use a washing."

Effie wrinkled her nose in agreement, waving a manicured hand by her nose.

"Off to bed with you lot," she agreed to everybody. "Tomorrow's the first day of training and it's good to do your very best to make allies and impress the gamemakers!"

"S'not it," Haymitch slurred, uncapping a bottle. "That's not right. S'not right."

He meant to say that it was best to keep your abilities to yourself, then reveal true abilities to the gamemakers private audience, but it wasn't like Yonnor and Effie could decipher his barely comprehensible speech. I shot a pair of thumbs up, which in turn made the man chortle in surprise and whoop loudly all the back to the bathroom, where retching noises could be heard.

My private quarters were as large as our house back in the Seam, styled in a wide studio styled penthouse. But when I tried to open the doors to the penthouse balcony to look at the busy streets full of interesting cultures, the doorknob immediately melted into its metal frame. I jolted backwards. The fact that the gamemakers needed to assure that tributes wouldn't commit suicide by possibly jumping out the window by locking us in had to be an extreme measure from more than one instance of teen suicide. I hadn't remembered watching any games where that had occurred, but Capitol technology was talented enough to perhaps create a robot for the public appearance full of fake blood for a theatrical and ultimately true looking death in the arena.

On a separate topic, the bathrooms were amazing. Several different nozzles, all at the most tissue deep massaging pressure mixed in with mesmerizing rose petal scented steam. A mint lay beside the sink, and when I chewed on it, a burst of sharp and cold flavor burned through my teeth and gums. Judging by the lack of toothbrush and toothpaste, that intense mint had served as both.

My clothes from before were no where to be seen, but my little elephant figurine rested on the expansive king bed's thin silky sheets.

"Good night, Gale. Good night, mom, Rory, Vick, and little Posy," I bid to the blank features of the elephant, tucked it against the lamppost by the bed, then fell face first into the pillows.


	3. Chapter 3

**Dreamers Live to Die**

**I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]**

**Published 2020.01.03**

* * *

Waking up was a nightmare.

At first, with the feathery pillow and weightless sheets and warm pumpkin-cinnamon smell wafting through the air, it felt like one of those lovely day dreams people had while taking idyllic late summer picnics in lush open meadows of a quiet park. But then the sheets were too soft, too wrong, and it felt almost like snakes were slithering up my body and around my throat to choke me and kill - .

I jumped out of bed in an instant, blood pounding in my ears. When there was no immediate danger beside the horrible pit sinking back down my stomach when remembering 'I'm in the Hunger Games now,' my legs dragged the rest of my trembling body to the bathroom and tried to drown itself in the shower.

The options for scents had been removed from the shower stall alongside the gels and after shower moisturizer options.

Potentia revealed the reason behind why, when I greeted her at the breakfast table, smelling of pumpkin pie and cold autumn day drinks. The outfit laid out in the closet had been a simple black skin-tight tracksuit with irritatingly tiny zippers and silicon lined shoes that resembled athletic wear.

"Oh, absolutely marvelous, isn't that right, Gregorius?" She flattered, patting down my wild hair. "I handpicked the scents and facial gels for you that represented your district best."

Except the fact that Appalachia weren't particularly known for pumpkins?

Yonnor emerged from his room, smelling sharply of honeysuckle and wet grass. They weren't bad choices, per se, but both of us honestly preferred to remain scentless than have a distinct way to track us. I sincerely hoped our stylists didn't spray us with heavy perfumes right before entering the arena.

My district mate wore a similarly designed track suit to mine, except in an ashen grey, not coal black.

By the time Haymitch stumbled into the room, groaning about a hangover before immediately swinging back a large gulp of whiskey from his vest pocket's secret stash, avoxes had already set a large buffet of foods onto the long stretch of the glass table.

I had really thought the man had been convinced of my absolute conviction to win, but perhaps he was too damaged from his past experiences to truly break out of his self-destructive habits. My pity for him barely outweighed my heavy conviction to throttle him for drinking so uncaringly, not lifting a finger to help either of us.

"Anything to say to us, mentor?" Yonnor rightfully so bites out in between sips of coffee.

The last living victor of district twelve snarled when his flask finally came up empty. He tucked it back into his vest and leaned his head back against the chair childishly. "My advice to you? Be prepared for your obviously imminent death, and know that from the bottom of my heart, I'll always mourn for you."

That statement had to contain an inkling of truth, as every child's death took a toll on the man's mental health.

"Carbo-load," I suggested instead, shooting the drunken man a nasty glare. Or, tried to. Gale had always sad that my glaring looked more like I was on the verge of tears and was about to guilt-trip someone. "If finding food is difficult, we can try to gain as much fat weight as possible, so we can live longer on the starvation scale than others."

"Never do strength training exercises when doing that," Haymitch chimed in unexpectedly. "If you begin lifting weights while eating a high calorie diet, your metabolism will shoot up and you'll only starve to death quicker once you're out in the arena. I'd really recommend just eating normally, though, since overeating can cause interesting stomach problems."

Yonnor and I shared a look before drilling the still mildly unwilling mentor for more information.

He ended up clamming up by the fifth question, citing an urgent need to visit the mini bar in the kitchens, and practically ran away in his awkward hobbling gait.

I turned to Potentia. "So, what now?"

My stylist blinked, as if visually digesting the information, then smiled wider than a Cheshire cat's. "Aha! It's almost ten, so you should be going to the elevators now, where Effie will be waiting to lead you all to the training areas underground. Good luck, now, and make sure to flip your hair up every half hour so the pumpkin-cinnamon scent lasts as long as possible!"

Yonnor and I ignored our stylists with practiced ease, immediately bounding for the elevator, where the doors conveniently opened to reveal one Effie Trinket.

"Good, you're both here. I'll be taking you two down now. And remember," she warned as we stepped inside the glass tube. "the gamemakers are the audience to the gymnasium. They see everything you do from their seats. Some may even walk around the gymnasium to examine the training processes even closer, or to engage in a conversation with a particularly interesting tribute. Remember to smile, walk straight, and always be charming!"

In the large, monotonous designs of the expansive gymnasium, were built in bleachers all around the center training stage. About twenty gamemakers in deep violet robes sat on a focal stage where a theater-like opening had been built in for an open display of never ending feasts and wine. Even a few minutes earlier than ten a.m., we were the last to join the other twenty-two tributes standing in a loose semi-circle in front of a tall dark-skinned woman. An avox scurried over to us to pin on a "District Twelve" badge to our backs before the trainer spoke.

Her name was Atala, the head trainer for the districts' tributes. She explained the basic rules inside the training center and the training schedule. Tributes were free to enter any station of their or their mentor's choosing. No fighting with another tribute. Lunch would be served from twelve-thirty to one-thirty in a room adjacent to this one. Her words were concise and extremely clear, which I respected. Atala appeared to be a fair judge of a trainer.

Once released from her introduction, Yonnor immediately left my side to investigate the fire making station. The boisterous Careers veered off to claim the entire section of stations dedicated to large weaponry items, leaving the remaining shifty tributes to drift between the easier to handle knife stations and climbing stations. Because I didn't want to operate alongside someone I'd know would die in less than a week, I chose a station that everybody was avoiding.

"What station is this?" I asked politely, eyeing the trainer helper with carefully hidden disdain. The fact that this bearded old man had more pudge than a baby walrus while Gale and I still struggled to feed our family sometimes, really hit home the differences between the Capitol and the districts.

He laughed jovially, gesturing wildly at the ensemble of bronze wires and mechanical tools laid out on the ground. "This is the electrical and mechanical foundations station. Almost no one visits through here, but I keep recommending for this station to stay open for the victors out of respect for our beloved Beetee Latier."

Beetee Latier of district three, nicknamed "Volts" for having won the forty ninth Hunger Games using only a spool of wire and a well timed lightning strike. His year's Hunger Games had been set in a rocky tundra surrounded by a lightning field. The famed genius of a man had electrocuted the remaining six tributes using physics, mathematics, and a magical stroke of luck at being able to secure a spool of wire from the Cornucopia. Each year, there were weapons included in the Cornucopia that weren't really conventional items and possibly a gag-gift from a rich comedian to a gamemaker. However, Beetee had been able to very effectively win his games using just one spool of wire, so they appeared to have kept this specific station open ever since then, in hopes of seeing a new bright mind pop up and wow the crowd.

"Sure," I shrugged amiably, noticing a surprised look on a few gamemakers nearby. "Why not."

After an hour, I had memorized the basics of electricity and voltages in different types of metals and their conductivity, basic how-tos of building and fixing mechanical features, and a brief introduction on physics. Of course, I had taken a Physics course in college Before, but relearning all the complicated electromagnetism formulas and recalling the chain rule to calculate acceleration, speed, and velocity took my mind for a delightful trip down memory lane.

Because Haymitch had advised to spend no longer than an hour at each station, I thanked the man for the crash course and moved on.

It was eleven now, meaning I had an hour and a half till lunch. I filled that time period by focusing on the empty stations, still not having gathered enough nerves to visit the more popular and more likely exceedingly useful ones. I spent half an hour learning about weather patterns, how to read the sky based on temperature, color, density, winds, and clouds, and the telling signs given by the surrounding nature and wildlife. Perhaps this station truly could be put to use, but the woman's droning voice resulted in at least a third of the information going in one ear and out the other.

Worn out already, I let myself go to a station I knew I'd enjoy - climbing. The rope climbing lessons were full, but the lessons where the sharp, slick surface with streams of water squirting out periodically onto the rocks that were basically devoid of hand holds? Perfect.

Mud caked under my fingers and sprays of water misted my hair as I pounced up the side of the twenty foot tall climbing wall using nothing more than elegant and swift movements using every strategic nook barely the size of my knuckles. At the top, I rolled onto a provided small dry ledge that smelled dustier than the bathrooms at school back home.

"Six seconds," a hidden scoreboard emerged from the ceiling just above my little ledge. The monotonous tone of "six seconds" from the computer aided voice almost made me leap off the ledge, I had to admit.

Immediately, all the tributes stopped to stare at a chart forming on the screen, placing my name as first place in the rock climbing challenge. God fucking dammit.

A ladder emerged from a hidden panel by my side, but I ignored it in lieu of climbing back down the cliff side in another extraordinary display of dexterity. If I were to be going out, it might as well be with a bang, right?

The Careers rushed over from their spear throwing station to challenge my first place status. Being first place in a memory game like the boy from district three had announced just an hour ago - that was nothing special. Everybody moved on with their lives. But first place at rock climbing, a potentially life saving skill? That took the cake.

Using my slight stature, I breezed away from that back station to head over to a now unoccupied popular station - fire making. Gale and I knew how to make a fire using sturdy twigs and bits of string, but it seemed exceedingly useful to know how to build warmth through pretty much any and every biome on earth.

By the third day, I had gone through nearly all of the stations for at least a couple minutes, gaining the basic knowledge of what the station even was. I avoided the Careers, Yonnor, and everyone else who was basically bigger than me by more than fifty pounds. Not a hard feat, as I was pretty sure I tipped the scales at somewhere between eighty and ninety pounds at a hair above the five foot mark. In a previous life, this would've been called malnourished. Too skinny. Dangerously unhealthy. A growing girl needed to eat more, and such and such. For district twelve, this was on the better side of the scale. There were children in my age group at school who were as light as birds, with protruding ribs showing grotesquely through faded shirts and frail wrists as thin as their playground chalk sticks. Our family's daily intake of fresh meats from Gale's frogs and squirrels would surely not allow for Rory, Vick, or baby Posy to fall into such extreme levels of starvation and hunger.

I felt guilty gorging myself on feasts during lunch now reminded of my family. How were they? How did they feel about seeing my face plastered all over national television, seemingly enjoying the festivities of the Capitol? The sweet orange based sauce soaking the chicken dish dripped steadily off my fork and back onto the plate. Drip. Drip. Drip. I imagined Rory and Vick glimpsing into the extravagant food the Capitol had to offer and how they'd cry from the wonderful taste being like nothing they'd ever eaten before. That made me feel a little better, thinking about them. How excited they'd be when I returned home to their arms. If I returned home.

If I were to make it out the arena alive.

After the third day's lunch period, officials began calling out the names of the tributes in number and gender order. The time for the private showcases had arrived.

"Thist Roserock," The official called out, waking me out of my thoughts. The boy from eleven - had I been sitting here alone in my thoughts for that long? - stood up from his position on the other side of the cafeteria.

Five minutes later, the girl from eleven, a girl whose name I thought to be Zinnie but was actually Zanna Cresh, stood up and sauntered to the door. Three tables ahead was Yonnor drumming his fingers on the his table's surface. It felt awkward and empty with just me and him, especially since that we had come to the wordless mutual agreement to avoid each other during the pre-Arena times so that eventually trying to kill each other off during the actual games would be less awkward if we had actually bonded.

The fact that we had never interacted while inside our own district worked wonders for that type of distancing.

Eight minutes later, Yonnor left with the official, leaving me to dwell in my thoughts alone. What were my strengths? Creating traps, snares, ropes, and nets. Climbing virtually any type of rock or tree. Tracking. Foraging.

Initially, I had planned on forming an intricate snare using only the bare essentials, then writing a cheeky message on the ground that the gamemakers would surely enjoy. But as the official brought me into the empty gymnasium, surrounded by loads of everything I needed, I began to panic. Of course I had forgotten the part in the games where Katniss discovered the hard way that the district twelve female was the worst position to impress gamemakers. They were all tipsy or flat out drunk from their constant feast of refreshments, paying more attention to the salted hams and great big pots of fish stew avoxes brought out.

Everything from the wires of the electronics section to the crumbling leaves in the foraging section had been brought out. Instead of creating a clever snare that would rank me at somewhere between a six or a seven, I instead needed to be impressive.

Taking spools of wire, a self contained arduino chip, a power distribution panel, and several other random gadgets here and there, I worked on creating a masterpiece they wouldn't forget.

When the project was completed less than six minutes later, I gave a shrill and booming whistle, making all the feasting gamemakers turn their heads to me. I connected the electricity from the PDP to the first wire, then jumped to the side to watch my progress. I threw a fist sized rock against a tightly coiled line of wire woven between two standing platforms, then covered my ears. A deafening boom filled the gymnasium from my self made explosives trap. The use of explosives were unique to my district's coal mining, and I knew that this private session would definitely hammer in the connection between me and my pride for my district.

The head gamemaker, a man named Dresdee Harribel with indigo blue dyed skin, slowly began clapping. "Very good. You may return to your quarters, Miss Blaire Hawthorne."

I tilted my body forward, unsure whether or not to bow out of respectful deference, but decided against it and responded with a sweet smile before fleeing the room.

The main components of an improvised explosives device were power, initiator, explosive, and switch. The input, or trigger, had been via motion sensor of the trip wire. Instead of locking down into a typical mechanical motion trap, where a tripping the wire would result in a hatchet raining down, it triggered the power to generate in the planted bomb above or below, instantly killing the victim.

Even though the method was chaotic, running straight into a bomb surely made a quick, merciful death.

"Traps and snares?" Haymitched drawled as way of hello when the elevator opened to our floor.

Effie stood up from her seat by Yonnor, where wrinkles etched into his hardened jaw. "Ah, Blaire! How'd you do?"

Terrible. Absolutely terrified that the gamemakers didn't enjoy bombers, as those people were too eerily reminiscent of district thirteen's people. It had been a swell idea at the time, but now I was simply terrified.

"Meh. I think I did average," I lied, giving a half-shrug.

Our stylists, Potentia and Gregorius, entered through the elevator two hours later just in time for the official ranking scores to be announced to all of Panem. The lot of us snuggled deep into the long fluffy couch in front of the huge hologram TV. The Capitol born people squealed when the channel shifted to the nationwide broadcast of Caeser Flickerman announcing the premise of the games and the current games score. It felt utterly surreal, to be in the center of the media when all I wanted in this life was to wait for the second rebellion uprising to fix everything. I hadn't counted on actually being thrown into the games out of godforsaken unluckiness. Instead of being a content wallflower, biding my time for peace, I was now going to rather be memorialized in history as a victim of the sixty-ninth Hunger Games, or emerge a victor but with a sizeable amount of mental issues and PTSD from the arena.

"As you know," began Flickerman's smooth honey-like voice. "tributes are rated on a scale from one to twelve after three days of careful evaluation by the gamekeepers."

The beginning speech remained a constant throughout the years. As expected, the Careers all scored between eight and ten, the kids from three scored moderately high scores, the other districts scored between a range of four to seven.

"District Twelve." Everyone leaned forward in anticipation. "Yonnor Bayaurch. Score of eight."

He sunk back in relief alongside a gasping Gregorius and Effie. "A great score for district twelve," they cheered. "My, my, how wonderful."

And when the screen behind the famous host's body shifted to view a picture of my full body shot and portrait three quarter views of my head (how had they gotten those pictures? Digital artists?), Haymitch set his glass of scotch on the rocks down.

"Blaire Hawthorne. Score of nine."

Effie and Potentia screamed in their overwhelming joy at how impressive the score was, but all I could think was that at least the gamemakers had enjoyed the display, not gotten the wrong message.

I slumped backwards, feeling suddenly too tired to finish watching the broadcast.

It was unfair, all of it. That children were thrown into an arena and expected to fight to the death. That the Capitol made an eighteen year old pit against twelve year olds, thinking it to be a just, fair fight in response to the first rebellion all those years ago. Sixty nine years of Hunger Games, sixty nine years of suffering, sixty nine years of torture.

It was also unfair because I wasn't really a tiny thirteen year old girl. My mind was that of a woman passing thirty-three, more than twice as experienced and mature than the rest.

Really, majoring in Chemical Engineering and interning at a big shot power company gave me quite the leg up from the competition. Once the man from the electronics station had ignited the fire of passions from my previous life, tidbits of mathematical equations, how to spark a blinding white light using zinc and fire, and even a homemade battery from a lemon, zinc metal, copper nails, and some wires.

While not faced with moral dilemmas as seriously as a developing child would have, it still hurt to think that I'd have to kill innocents for Gale and I's selfish promise.

* * *

I woke up the next morning at the crack of dawn. Because there wasn't much to do in my room other than stare at the small wooden elephant still resting besides a lamppost, I tiptoed downstairs out of force of habit. So used to creaking stairs in our old family home, I learned to walk gently and silent over even the loudest of floorboards. As today was the day before interviews, also known to be a day of rest for tributes who had no need to learn how to talk to crowds or walk in high heels in one day, the closet had set out a simple black tank top and bohemian styled green shorts. All the clothes were comfortable, but almost too comfortable to the point where I forgot if I was even wearing clothes at all.

Effie found me like curled up between couch cushions and throw pillows watching television reruns of past Hunger Games. She reached for the remote and turned the screen off right as the eleventh Hunger Games finale film ended in a flourish of Mags Flanagan being crowned victor.

"We've got quite a bit of work cut out for you, Blaire," she sniped, tossing the remote away. "Come on, up you go, now. Haymitch somehow convinced me last night to help you for your interviews tomorrow night."

I recalled the woman helping Katniss with her form and posture in the books for a few hours. Did Effie not usually do that, directly help the tributes?

"Thank you," I remembered to say, knowing the woman needed to hear constant affection in her life.

Her green tinted lips stretched into a haughty smile before beginning our first lesson.

By lunch time, my ankles were more sore than the time Gale dared me to jump-kick a giant boulder with my bare feet. Due to my age, I doubted Potentia would even make any kind of heel on my shoes, but it was still good practice, this formal sort of stuff. She then taught me how to sit up straighter by relaxing the shoulders and having the small dip in my back always be perpendicular to the ground, not the other parts of the vertebrae.

"You've done a much better job than the past tributes," Effie said simperingly when all I wanted to do was face plant into my soup and sleep like the dead. "You might even make an impression. Of course, everyone can make an impression when there's Caesar Flickerman right next to them. You'll do just fine."

She dragged Yonnor into her clutches for the afternoon for his etiquette lessons. I stared down Haymitch, who was pouring copious amounts of a clear white liquid into cranberry juice.

"Your liver must be as damaged as your head after the games," I shot at him. He continued pouring his drink, then threw the empty bottle against the wall, where it broke in a terrifying noise into a million tiny pieces.

"Yeah, well. The Capitol offers live-in therapy services, if killing people in the arena ain't your thing."

"I know that everyone says they want to win, but don't you think I can do it? Become a sociopathic monster for the sake of seeing my family again?"

He laughed harshly. "The youngest ever victor to come out that arena was Finnick Odair at fourteen. But when he was fourteen, he was already six feet tall and was the prettiest peacock in the bunch. You're a thirteen year old squirt who somehow scored a nine in the training center. That means all the Careers will be hunting you down like a turkey for dinner. Just enjoy your last few days in the glamours of the Capitol."

He needed to hear a winning statement, stat.

"Bombs," I cut in abruptly. "That's how I scored that nine. I made a bomb."

He raised an eyebrow and set down his drink, as if to say "go on."

"I know I have above average intelligence, possibly could be considered smart. I made an explosive trap by making a wire trap motion sensor using eight feet of wire, copper nails, and an energy source of fire." I leaned forward menacingly. "I can win this."

"Then prove it."

* * *

"From district twelve, we'd like to welcome Blaire Hawthorne!"

Walking to the front of stage from where I had been waiting from the eeves, Caesar Flickerman pressed the three minute timer and began gesturing wildly at the crowd at my entrance, making them go even more wild. The cheering of the booming applause drowned out every last thought in my head, so it was only by reflex did I sit down on the pristine white chairs provided when the colorful host took my hand in signal.

He wore a lazy smile as the cheering slowed down. "So, Blaire. I understand that while you're young, you're still feisty. I mean, wow! - a score of nine? That's insane! Tell us how you did it!"

The crowd began clapping again while I struggled to start the sentence. "Well," I said casually. "Since it's illegal to disclose the private training show, I'll instead tell you what my strengths are."

A great big smile stretched across his face. "Whoa, I like this fire!"

The crowd agreed.

"I'm very good at climbing and making things like traps and snares. I'd like to think that out of all twenty-four tributes, I've got the best survival skills." My words were arrogant, but the Capitol lapped it up, enjoying the firey and snarky manner a little kid like me behaved.

The host nodded in agreement alongside the audience. "Wow! That's pretty impressive! Which reminds me, how do you think you compare against the other tributes? You're the smallest one in there, which means you get to be extremely sneaky."

Mentally, I congratulated him on providing an example of how smaller could mean sneakier, therefore allowing me to catch a few sponsors' eyes. He truly was a strong attribute to a victor's victory and for getting everyone sponsor deals.

"Well," I laughed, curling a stray curl of hair by my ear (an intentional design because Potentia liked my natural sprightly aura or some other divine bullshit). "Because of my stature, I could chop off someone's knees before they even looked down. It's great, right?"

People whooped and whistled at that statement. Flickerman clutched at his stomach and bellowed out deep chortles. "I love that! Wow! We've got a natural fighter right here! From what I can gather, you're young, you're smart, and you're definitely skilled at surviving. Hear that, sponsors? We've got ourselves an amazing tribute from district twelve!"

Those words rightfully should have shaken me to the core in the fear that other tributes would gunning for me now, hoping to steal off potential sponsors. However, Caesar Flickerman had essentially demanded that the audience sponsor the girl from district seven after she proclaimed that she wanted to win to pay off her baby sister's medical bills. That tribute, Cynthia Corinne, had only garnered a score of four, so I had in full confidence that her pity-ploy would not work in the arena, where the Careers would be kicking her into a six foot deep grave.

"How does district twelve and the Capitol compare?" He asked, knocking me out of my temporary stupor.

The exquisite food. The out of the box fashion choices. The loopy accent where people spoke by moving their mouth as little as possible. The existential crisis of being under President Snow's dictatorial styled regime. It spoke volumes of the sway of the consumer market about how communism hadn't been put into place (yet).

_Panem et circenses_. Food and entertainment.

"It's amazing," I gushed in half-truths. "I've never known such luxury before. Back home, you'd be lucky to eat three meals a day. Over here, I can press a button in my room and a server knocks at my door ten minutes later with a tray full of sugary treats!"

Playing the amazement card? No problem.

"And last question, as we are running out of time - " the crowd groaned at this, at which I was relieved that they seemed sad to let me go, hopefully signifying that enough of them chose me as their favorite. " - do you have anyone important back home who you want to win the games for?"

A pause.

"My family," I said resolutely, staring straight into a zooming hovercraft camera at the base of the stadium. "I love my family more than anything. I promised to them that I'll win the games no matter what, just to see their smiles again. I've got the best, most hardworking mom in the world, a twin brother, Gale, who I swear knows me better than I know myself. And I've got a pair of twin brothers, Rory and Vick, who are five years younger. And a little baby sister, Posy, who's going to be turning two years old next month."

The crowd cooed at the mention of Posy, then the buzzer lit up.

"Aww, so sad to see you go! I wish you the best of luck, Blaire Hawthorne!"

People applauded respectfully as I took my leave.

* * *

"Why's she saying weird stuff?" Vick tugged on Gale's arm, pointing at the rickety screen. The Hawthornes still owned a physical screen the shape of a lumpy box - a rarity, given how common hologram technology had become in the past century.

Blaire, sitting on a staged platform that sparkled brighter than the lake on a summer day and wearing a shimmery rose-gold dress that had to cost more than a thousand tesserae, spat out a disgustingly sappy speech to please the Capitol viewers. "She needs to pretend to be nice," Gale replied after a long pause. "If the Capitol likes you, you survive longer in the games."

Vick huffed. "Whaddya mean 'survive longer?' Of course she's going to win!"

"Yeah! Blast through 'em all!" Rory cheered from the kitchen. Gale heard a light slap and an "ouch." Probably mom reprimanding him for yelling inside.

When his twin sister's interview ended with a full hearted applause from the audience, panic tightened in his chest. He knew Blaire was more than capable of surviving alone based on their own experiences in the mountains outside the district's fences, but her unusually high ripple in the crowd made her stand out more than she could handle on her own.

Blaire's knife skills only extended to whittling and carving - creation. She had never been a destructive person, never enjoyed cruel activities. She leapt from tree branch to tree branch like those monkey tricks he saw on TV once, climbed steep slopes as fast as her normal running speed, and had an unnaturally keen eye for tracking animals. Without her around, he had been forced to rely more on Katniss' hunting ability to detect near unnoticeable shifts in the wind's direction and her skill with large game. Some days, he just wanted to sit in front of the screen all day, grasping at memories of his sister, but by Katniss' urging, they spent nearly all of their daylight hours productively hunting down food for their family's bellies.

"I like her dress," Posy whispered shyly, toddling from her spot on the matted floor. Her wooden animal toys laid chaotically strewn all over her little play corner. "Blay-yuh is sooooo pretty."

She still couldn't pronounce Blaire's name correctly. Everyone thought it was adorable. Except for Rory, Gale supposed, because Posy kept calling him "Wor-yee" instead of "Ro-ry."

"But if she wins, we have to live next to that mean old drunk guy! Can't we just ask the Mr. President Snow to let her leave?" Vick questioned innocently.

Gale couldn't bring himself to answer.


	4. Chapter 4

**Dreamers Live to Die**

**I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]**

**Published 2020.01.11**

* * *

I stood in the steel walled room, empty and alone. Haymitch and Effie didn't really believe in this year's batch of tributes, not really. All Effie really thought about was getting promoted to a better district or dreaming about making waves within the fashion industry. Haymitch hadn't really tried to pull through for either Yonnor or I, ending up drinking himself sick at the tense dinner last night after the interviews.

Perhaps Cinna cared enough about Katniss to see her go, but Potentia and Gregorius had friends in the city to watch the opening of the sixty ninth annual Hunger Games with.

Pacing around the room to distract myself from my poisonous thoughts, I ended up examining the material of the clothes for the games. They comprised of a nylon black tank top, dark grey skin tight pants, clunky leather boots strapped up with at least two feet's worth of lace strings, and a papery grey bomber jacket. My token was safely stuffed deep in the pants' side pockets, a comforting weight against my thigh for all the trials and tribulations to come.

"Tributes, please step inside the tube," a metallic voiced churned overhead on the speakers. Swallowing down the urge to vomit out of nerves, I stepped inside and locked my fate for the rest of my life.

The tube sealed shut with a hiss of steam before it shot straight up to the arena field.

At first, everything was so bright from the sudden shift in surroundings, but as my eyes calmed down and everything became less blurry, this year's arena was revealed. I wanted to cry.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let the sixty ninth Hunger Games begin!" Boomed Claudius Templesmith's announcement.

In the sixty seconds ticking by all too fast, I drank in my surroundings, hating more and more of it with each passing moment. A desert. A burning desert, with miles of large, sandy dunes and abnormally huge cactus plants every so often dotted my peripheries. The shining bronze cornucopia sat in the center of all twenty four tributes' metal platforms. I caught nearly everyone finally taking note of the sweltering heat of the desert and tugging off their jackets.

A bad idea, as these jackets were meant to protect our bare skin from blisters, sun rash, and burns. But I supposed not everyone knew that, not having had the extensive childhood education I had had all those years ago.

I squinted in the direction of the cornucopia's mouth, analyzing which were the most useful and if there were water supplies. There, off in the distance, some twenty feet to the left of the mouth and close to the boy from eleven's platform, was a single spool of especially conductive alloy metal wire that I knew the gamemakers this year put in for me.

And when Claudius Templesmith, the legendary announcer of the games (surprisingly not Caeser Flickerman, but I guessed the two of them worked on different projects), started counting down into the single digits, my mind sharpened to the clearest it had ever been.

The gong rang.

Faster than ever before, I darted to the boy from eleven's platform, glad that he and all the tributes surrounding him headed immediately to the center of the action. In ten seconds, I scooped up the spool of wire, stuffed it into my jacket, and ran to pick up a dark purple backpack off at the side. Someone else headed towards the same backpack, but it was securely fastened to my back by the time the first cannon was shot. The first cannon signaled to everyone that the Careers had reached the weapons at the cornucopia and it was very much time to leave. Not needing any other warning, I leaped out of crossfire from a boy throwing knives in my general vicinity and ran into the burning desert.

Once, a lifetime ago, I had a grandfather who stayed out too long on his boat during his weekly fishing trips. It had been the middle of a sweltering August, a record breaking high temperature showing all over national television. By the time a first responder team managed to booey his boat back to shore, he had suffered from heat stroke and died. Heat exhaustion set in before heat stroke, and I knew that water had to be a first priority, out here in the sands.

I must have ran for at least an hour straight because my lungs started to give out and my legs felt like jelly. In the desert, there were enough shadowy dunes and craven rock surfaces jutting out next to a bunch of cacti, but my brain was telling me to avoid the rocky platforms and stick with large, sandstone thick dunes. I didn't know what types of mutations of scorpions, snakes, or spiders lived in the cracks in the rocks, but any kind of desert cave was bound to be bad. My throat wasn't parched for water yet, but sweat dripped off my forehead by the gallon. Needless to say, I still kept the jacket on.

While situated behind a monstrously large dune, under its sweet shade, I spilled out the contents of my backpack after pulling the spool of wire from my jacket. An empty leather water pouch, a thin maroon blanket small enough to count as one of those autumn scarves, a rubber band, and a pack of dried fruits and nuts. A pack of essentials, minus the water.

A scaly lizard zipped past my feet.

The animals of the desert needed their water, too. I followed the lizard, hoping that it would lead me to a clean source of hydration, but a cacophony of cannons fired through the arena, distracting my senses long enough to lose track of the lizard.

Gamemakers always caught the first death in the cornucopia, but waited until the Careers cleared the area for the hovercrafts to carry away and count the number of bodies. I could only hope that they didn't head in my direction. In the end, fifteen people had died in the initial bloodbath. This number was unusually high, bringing the remaining survivors to a single digit number on only the first day.

If there were only four Careers this year, this meant that five people had spread themselves out among the dunes. Due to the severity of the climate, at least one more would die by the end of the night.

I prayed that it wouldn't be me.

* * *

"What do you think of this year's batch of tributes, Claudius?"

Gale glued his eyes onto the screen, heart still hammering in his chest. Nine survivors. Only nine left on the first day. This year's Hunger Games arena had to be the most brutal in decades, and his sister was a participant.

The screen split between the live footage following the popular Careers as they headed east, the exact direction of Blaire, and the two legendary hosts.

"Ooh, I don't know, Caeser. Have you seen Rogley's abs? That district one boy is smoking hot!" The camera zoomed in on the blistering sands. "Literally!"

A laugh track commenced.

"Shouldn't you be at school?" Mom yelled from the outside, where she was hanging her customer's linens to dry.

Gale fumed over the forced nonchalance from everyone. Mom pretending everything was alright, Vick and Rory still too young to truly understand what being in the Hunger Games entailed, and little Posy who didn't even know what death meant. He tried going to school in the morning, but everyone, including his teacher, kept asking him awkward questions about his well being.

He had punched his (their!) bedroom wall earlier that morning and accidentally sprained his wrist in the process, making it unsuitable to lose himself in hunting. Thus, the television. Watching his one and only twin fight her way through the blood sports.

Blaire's cold grey eyes widened on camera as she circled around an eight foot tall cactus. Separate angles showed her lips moving. "Do cacti have water?" The audio picked up. To the side, the hosts cracked a joke, but all Gale could do was watch his sister intensely. He didn't know what the word "cacti" was, but he bet that it was the weird looking plant.

She pulled out a rubber band from her backpack, backed away a sizeable distance, then shot the rubber band straight at the lime green spike covered husk. Nothing happened. She pulled a scraggly rock half the size of her head from the base of a sand dune, then chucked it into the cactus. Still, nothing.

A cunning light glinted in the girl's eyes - a light Gale knew all too well. Blaire was about to do something incredibly genius or incredibly stupid. It varied day to day.

She pulled out a spool of wire, then tightened a noose around the midsection of the plant. With a harried yank, the upper trunk tumbled straight down with surprising intensity, kicking up a cloud of sand.

The screen split again to welcome back the hosts after a small break.

"Whoa, we can see here that Miss Blaire Hawthorne is the first to discover that this arena actually has the most amount of accessible drinkable water out of all the past arenas," Caesar mused, bringing Gale into shock.

"Yes, yes," Claudius said. "In this specially designed arena, the miles and miles of desert have quite a few cactus plants filled with water inside."

The other side of the screen zoomed in to see Blaire greedily filling up her waterskin with the liquid revealed.

"But the catch is, the mutations don't like people stealing their water."

* * *

Because the water might have been contaminated - or just might be pure poison, who knew - I made sure to fill the waterskin to the brim, then splashed a few drops at my feet, where a few lizards curiously nibbled my shoes. At first, I had thought them to be mutations, but if they were, I'd definitely be dead by now.

One brave brown lizard scurried over to the drops and sucked it up. It scurried back. When the lizard didn't drop dead after a full minute after sucking up the water droplets, I deemed it safe enough to drink.

A shrill screech made me whirl around, back at the cactus stump. A giant bird resembling the lovechild of a bald eagle and a vulture crouched accusingly on top of the plant stump's rim, its narrow black eyes piercing straight into my soul. Judging by its size, its wingspan had to be at least thirteen feet wide.

With a creature of flight, running away, back turned, had to be useless. I wouldn't be able to spot any attacks. The creature cawed accusingly, its claws crunching the green barrel-like rim. And then it darted forward.

I jumped to the side, but a wing beat me back straight into a craggy dune. Sand sloped into my eyes and they burned from the contact as the bird changed directions and leaped towards me again. While dodging much more nimbly this time, I noted how it didn't bother using flight to attack. Perhaps the bird was too heavy to fly?

It screeched again, this time louder and more high pitched than before. My ears felt like they were bleeding as it jumped to attack again, its beak shining fiercely underneath the blazing hot sun. I didn't have any weapons. No knives, no spears, no nothing. The blanket could be used to momentarily distract the bird, but it was too quick to let me tie it up in wire.

"Oh hey, it's the girl from twelve!" Clamored someone from behind, and I risked a quick look back to see that the two Careers from district one had caught up. In the distraction, the bird had darted forward, ripping a large gash through the meat of my left shoulder. I howled from the pain just as the bird careened back into the two tributes.

"Rogley, hel - !" The female tribute screamed, and I heard the gruesome snap of bones and tearing of flesh before turning around with a hand clutched over my bloody mess of a shoulder. Rania Gnaeus, the female district one Career known for her deft skill with a javelin, was little more than a sack of sticky, wet meat. The bird had ripped a hole with its beak straight through her pelvis, leaving behind a pair of detached legs and a broken upper body. The bird mutation clawed through her remains, tugging apart slippery meat of her exposed trachea in a godawful squishing noise.

I ran. I ran and ran and ran, until the sun pounded behind my eyes in dry white spots and the noises of terror that girl from one had made cemented itself into the rhythm of my feet beating down on the dry grains of sand.

My head swarmed with flashing neon colors, splashes of blood, and a deep ache that felt a millennium old. Finally, as the sun receded into the horizon and a cool rush of wind breezed through my hair, the mild sting of sunburn pulled me back into reality. In a clockwork motion, not really thinking about my actions, I settled down behind a tall and unmoving sandstone craggy dune, drinking half my waterskin in a blur of motion. Hidden cameras undoubtedly had caught the terror worn cravenly on my expressions throughout the mindless journey out, carelessly tumbling this way and that, allowing the dry heat to fester into the gaping wound oozing viscous yellow pus.

Taking out the long thin blanket from my pack, I ripped it in half using strength I didn't realize I had and wrapped the cloth around my head in a middle eastern manner. Why I hadn't thought to do this for head protection, I didn't know. Using the remaining water from the waterskin, I poured out in dribbles onto the aching flesh of the shoulder, biting the inside of my cheek to stop from bawling.

Sponsors. Some sponsors would definitely do some good right now.

"I don't know if you can hear me, Haymitch," I mumbled into the ground, finally allowing myself to try to rest. "But I forgive you."

What did I forgive him for? I couldn't reply in just one answer, as he had done a lot of bad in his life. But I still forgave him for being a drunkard of a mentor, probably less coherent than district six's morphling mentors from all his strong brandy. I wanted to tell him all this and more, but the haze of fatigue caught up to me soon after finishing tying up my shoulder with the remaining part of the blanket, and I collapsed into the darkness.

The sound of the national anthem startled me awake. It was very much night time by then, so I had gotten a few hours of sleep in. Last night, I had slept terribly, tossing and turning in anxiety, so I couldn't imagine very much was keeping me awake at the moment other than the blaring noise of song.

However, the winds had shifted the shape of the land though the night, and I had to shake off several gallons of sand off my legs to sit up properly and view the projected hologram screen.

The female Career from one. A boy from three. Both tributes from four, five, and six. The girls from seven and eight. Both tributes from nine and eleven. The boy from ten. And when Yonnor's name and profile popped up on the screen, I could barely dig up an ounce of remorse.

That left three Careers, a girl from three, a boy from seven, a boy from eight, a girl from ten, and me.

Four girls, four boys.

_May the odds ever be in your favor._

I woke up just as the sun began to rise, vibrant purples, pinks, and reds shooting across the blurry skies. Due to the undying winds of the night, I had to dig half my body out from underneath a pile of sand and shake off all the itchy grains that had somehow burrowed their way into my headscarf. A need for water parched my throat and cracked my lips, but I was hesitant to cut open a cactus again, especially after yesterday.

My skin blanched at the thought of yesterday. The girl from one. Her detached limbs strewn across the ground, staining the sands red. The fowl smell of her innards. An expression of horror forever memorialized on her features.

What was her name? Who was she? Did she have a family who cared for her? Little brothers? A baby sister?

Ignoring those haunting thoughts, I snacked on a few nuts and pieces of dried fruit in attempts to avoid the eventual battle of thirst.

Due to the extra few pounds of fat gained from eating lavishly in the Capitol, I didn't need to eat as much as I had feared. There were enough lizards around to catch, and the heat waves wafting from all sides of the desert would do well to hide any smoke signal. My pack of nuts and dried fruits didn't seem to be getting any lighter - another good sign. But dehydration was an issue, especially in a burning desert.

Because it was useless to walk underneath the blistering sun all day, I stayed under my shadowy dune, humming a raw melody from memory. A children's song. Something about roses and death. How morbid.

With only eight tributes left, only a third remaining, this would be when the hosts started interviewing friends and families of each victor to add to the screen time. It had been maybe twenty years since a tribute from district twelve had made the top eight, so I imagined the shock of any of the television program hosts traveling to the Seam just to get a glimpse of Gale's put-out choice words about my situation. That made me giggle, but I forced myself to choke down the rest of the giggles and smiles to not seem unhinged to the entirety of Panem.

So I thought about my family again, to create a somber mood. How were they doing? How many animals had Gale caught in the past week? Did Rory and Vick get over their little argument the morning of my reaping ceremony? How was mom? Had she requested a break from work to alleviate her stress levels? And then I thought about how Gale would be forced into the spotlight for interviews again, in just five years, for Katniss' Hunger Games.

He would hate that. He hated any kind of attention. His good-natured, selfless little butt couldn't help but do everything in his power to stay out of the homing beacons. The girls at school lapped it up and more than five of my students had come up to me proclaiming a crush on my brother.

Finally, when the dryness in my throat became unbearable, I crept out of my hidey hole and peeked over the top of the dune, observing the seemingly eternal stretch of land. I counted five cacti before deciding enough was enough and the best chance of sneaking water was going back to my well, a day's journey from my position. There couldn't be contaminations in the water, or at least not any notable ones, because there was a resounding lack of insects in the arena for vector travel, and the air sucked out all the humidity anyway. I'd be lucky to scrape off the inside goopy flesh.

That was how my day was spent, traveling back in the same direction, humming old show tunes and pop verses as my tongue dried and throat crackled with blood. Soon enough, not quite there yet, the pounding in my head retched on as painfully as the rot in my shoulder and just a rough breeze was enough to lay me flat on my back. When it becomes clear that travelling back to find water the same way was going to be impossible, I pull myself upright with wobbly legs and drag on south towards a plane of rocky crevices. I had been avoiding them for the past day and a half due to the implication that crevices and caves had something stored up inside, like a gargantuan spider, but I doubted the gamemakers wanted to kill off everyone in less than three days. Being down to final eight on the first day had to have been some sort of record, as it usually took until the fifth day of the games for that to happen. Instead of creating more deaths, there had to be _drama_. A new mutation that wouldn't kill, but cause intense nightmares. The field shifting to reveal a hidden dungeon. Finding an oasis. The fan favorite receiving a present from a sponsor. Those kinds of things had been lacking from this hellish arena so far.

With the last of my strength, I blearily stumbled down a little wave of sand, where it hardened into a nook. And then just barely caught myself before dropping face first into the deepest crevice ever seen. A gust of musty air breathed outwards, brushing my hair upwards to the sky. Whatever was down there felt older than the gods.

This led to an insane idea trickling into my head.

My undershirt, being the least useful clothing article at the moment, was the prime ingredient. Aware that possibly the entirety of Panem could be watching me at this moment, I made sure to take off the shirt from underneath the jacket as gracefully as possible. I ripped up the cloth into little strips, where I began knotting a perfect contraption against the dry yet sturdy mangled weed roots creeping up the sides of the crevice. Gripping my wires, I trotted off to the nearest cactus and started the cycle all over again. After refilling my waterskin and wiping off as much dirt, blood, and dust from my body, a single caw flitted from above. It was by miracle alone that I was able to dodge the mutation's first strike. It slammed straight into the ground where I had just been, so I took my chance immediately and dashed back to the crevice. Just the slightest whirring noise ticked my ears and I immediately swerved to the side, avoiding yet another attack.

"Come and get me, you stupid bird!" I rasped out, waving my arms maniacally. Said bird screeched powerfully and kicked off once again, shining beak honing in. I hooked one foot into a noose laying strategically just at the edge of the cliff, then fell backwards into the great beyond, the mutation following.

Because of the bird's wing structure and aerodynamic body, it plummeted all the way down the deep blackness. An unearthly growl shuddered from below, and that was when I swung myself to my side, grabbing onto the rocky walls and climbing back up. Heart still pounding and ultimately relieved that my handmade rope had held up (guess those Capitol cloths are made of sturdier stuff), I untied the noose from my ankle and gathered up all my supplies back into my pack.

Now that I had a fresh source of water for the rest of the day, or however long cactus water held, everything seemed bearable again.

I drank so much water I could hear it sloshing in my belly, and then cleaned every last nick of skin on my person. When I felt squeaky clean and refreshed and the barrel of cactus water was almost empty, it was finally time to reinspect my ever growing wound.

It didn't smell yet, which was a good sign that rot hadn't set it or anything too damaging. But there must have been some sort of nasty bacteria under the mutation's claws, as the barely clotting gash was surely infected. Its scabs were less of a hard shell and more of a protective layer of red-brown ooze.

"Wow, it'd sure be great for a few sponsors right now," I muttered under my breath, then cursing myself for drawling in sarcastic tones. While I disapproved of Haymitch's abundant drinking, it wasn't like he'd ever get right in the head to suddenly snap into sanity and pay attention.

Except for the girl on fire.

Katniss was a bit of a socially awkward and distant kid, from what I had seen, but the slight stammer whenever Gale mentioned her name or the sneaky expressions the twins wore whenever Gale and Katniss hung out on the recess field together meant that there was something more to her than what I cared to investigate. The trauma from losing your father to having to take care of your entire family alone probably had something to do with her distant attitude. Yeah, that was it.

A sharp metallic chirp echoed against the aggravating desert heat. A white box no larger than my head floated down from wherever, landing at my feet.

Oh god.

I grabbed the gift and scurried to a hidey spot behind a miniature mountain range of dunes. Inside, a small pot of white goo. There was only as much ointment as a matchstick box, so I made sure to conservatively apply the medicine to the worst of the wound. Instantly, the majority of the pain was relieved and a stress I hadn't known was there lifted from my mind. This medicine, the chemically innovative type, had to cost a pretty penny. I wondered if having a sponsor to afford this much spelled out certain trouble for my future, or an ignorable dread.

"Thank you," I rose my voice to the invisible cameras. "It is much appreciated."

No matter what it took, I was going to win the games.


	5. Chapter 5

**Dreamers Live to Die**

**I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]**

**Published 2020.01.22**

* * *

The first cannon shot out after a blissfully underwhelming period of three days. Three days since given the healing cream. Three days since discovering the arena's secrets.

Given the type of arena, it was hard to cover much land without needing a break or needing to regroup. This may have created quite a spectacle back at the Capitol, where the viewers were no doubt becoming increasingly bored. A gruesome lot, those people. I didn't know if that sole tribute who died on the fifth day had been killed by the Career pack or from the arena itself, but the answer became obvious on the mid-morning of the sixth day.

My methods of collecting water all tied down to a deft hand in traps and the newfound skill in wires. Figuring that the mutations grew more intelligent the more I killed, I was forced to come up with brand new ideas every day. Extending the entire spool for an elaborate spider web trap and into the empty chasm, finding a fake oasis where the ponds smelled poisonous and the fruit trees had layers of dead lizards by the trunks, and then making a mutation splash into the acid pool. Making a noose where tightening the wires around the bird's ugly head made my palms bleed from the effort. Perhaps I hadn't shown the audience the technical and electrical skills like Beetee, but they did know now to never let me near any type of string. I had used my shoelaces for folding together the correct pattern for the spider web trap - a useful tool, to be resourceful.

The girl from three I expected to live longer, as her district was geographically the closest to being in a desert, being where the remains of New Mexico and Arizona once had covered. Perhaps the climate all around the world had been altered after whatever created Panem the nation, but it wasn't like I'd ever be able to find out without travelling to other districts on a victory tour.

Now, that was an idea.

But on the mid morning of the sixth day in the arena, when the heat really started developing into something serious and the dryness made my hair stiffer than straw, a roaring boom and crash came from the north. My general direction of movement had luckily been a constant southeasterly direction, as those noises signified something much more dangerous than any tribute.

A sandstorm.

Wild. Chaotic. Untamed. Those words barely scratched the surface of a true sandstorm barreling down on you at hundreds of miles an hour. It was no more than a line in the distance, but the correlation between the girl from three's death and the sandstorm was absolutely _everything_. I didn't know if the other six tributes were aware of what was coming, but I did know for certain that there was only one place in the entire arena capable of taking that much damage.

The cornucopia.

I barely had a sense of direction, but some crazy adrenaline induced fever made me march all the way back west. It took the entire sixth day and a sloppy getaway from the vulture-eagle mutations resulting in a scratch tilting below my left eye that was too small to waste the precious medicine on (but I still worried about my face. I mean, it was the moneymaker, right?). At sundown, the glitter of the cornucopia shell outlined the distance. I could have cried from relief and ran in there with my hands waving in the air, but I chose to settle behind a cascading dune, keeping a steady eye on the ever growing storm.

At night, when the air felt chillier than ever before and the growing storms rumbled with energy in the distance (was it slowing down? was it? was it?), trumpets rang through the air before the national anthem. Claudius Templesmith's rich voice boomed overhead, announcing there to be a feast at the cornucopia for the remaining seven tributes, commencing immediately. Smart. That way, all the tributes could finally come together in one last final battle while the sandstorm billowed around them, trapping everyone in one area to ensure a sole victor.

When the announcement ended with his typical flourish, I crept up from my spot and squinted at the almost glowing bronze of the cornucopia. Staying inside that place had to be a metal death trap, given that the sun would only make metal hotter. Therefore, the Career tributes had likely packed all their supplies with them and migrated to somewhere cooler, like an underground cave. With their strength in numbers and training, they could fight off whatever beasts and mutations lived in the underground.

Praying to the ends of earth that I wasn't just about to run into a death trap, I fastened my backpack, netted a loose spiderweb trap to be ready in my hand just in case, and hastened forwards. There was a long stretch of running for ten minutes where there were no dunes in sight - just hard packed sand, flatter than boards of wood. I felt exposed running without any sort of cover, which only motivated me to run faster and reach my destination before I knew it. As expected, it was completely empty besides piles of supplies nobody could carry with them on foot, such as an entire wooden table, a rack of metal tridents, - funny, considering our climate, but I supposed Finnick Odair's popularity still made the gamemakers put his weapon of choice in all the subsequent games - electronic gadgets, and several wool covered empty wooden crates.

When no drones arrived to provide the upcoming feast in the next three hours, I grew confidant that Templesmith's announcement had just been a scam for all the tributes to rack up in a nice cutting order.

And I had been the first guest, having been prepared for hours.

I heard him before I saw him. A male. Alone. Scared. Timid footsteps. Rather the boy from seven or eight. Obviously smart enough to have survived so far. I couldn't tell the extent of his fighting prowess, as I was unsure if he had stolen his own water or was able to fight off the mutations for the cactus water. No, he had to have drunk the cactus water. No one man could carry enough water for several days in one backpack, given the heat.

From behind the crates, I peered through the little cracks between the wood panels, waiting for him to cross into the wire trap. And... paused. Just the slightest. The boy was a fan favorite, I remembered. A youthful one, so full of energy. A handsome young face.

But he was a deer, and I was a wolf.

After a moment's hesitation, he limped straight into the trap. The same time his leg made contact with the wire, I sparked two currents with my separate power adapter wires. With a blinding white flash that imprinted into the back of my eyes, he convulsed as a spasm of electricity flowed through his body. He dropped dead in a second. A cannon fired.

It was only when I dragged his still twitching body behind the crates did I realize the gravity of the situation.

I killed someone.

I killed someone - a child, a victim. I killed an innocent boy from district eight, fifteen years old. He had a family. Maybe a girlfriend. Or a pet. And friends. But what disgusted me more than the fact that I had his blood on my hands was that I barely felt anything about it.

I did what I had to do; that was all. The idea was torturous, but my body didn't tremble nor cry nor moan in agony. My body was a weapon, and it was sharper than it had ever been before.

One down, five more to go.

By the time the sandstorm was in its first preparatory stage of churning clouds, whistling winds, and thick, hot static energy, the Careers had arrived. A cannon fired in the distance, signalling the death of either the district ten girl or the district seven boy - but then it didn't matter too much about who was left because, as it turned out, the boy from seven had teamed up with the careers.

That meant the girl from ten had died, then. What was her name again? Zannia? Zannie? No, that sounded too much like the district eleven girl's name.

"Where's the feast?" Roared out the girl from two. She was maybe seventy pounds heavier than me and a whole foot taller, made of pure muscle. She wasn't an unattractive girl, per se, but her fierce features made me feel weak in the knees in the wrong way.

"Maybe it isn't here, yet?" The boy from seven - I was sure his name was Cyan - responded helpfully. I could see why the Careers had thought to keep him, as he was seven feet tall and carried at least three huge packs on his back. A pack mule, really. They were bound to kill him off after his usefulness faded.

"What isn't here is the girl from twelve," the boy from one, Rogley, said. "We saw the girl from eleven's corpse, and it's so bad outside that she's rather in here somewhere or about to die any minute now from the weather."

I remembered him being the most popular candidate to win the games due to his virtuous charms or something. But he looked puny compared to the other three tributes by the cornucopia entrance. A stripe of lightning echoed from the sky and they all jumped.

The girl from two, Amaria I thought her name was, rolled her eyes and leaned against the wall. I smiled as she unknowingly shifted closer to one of my traps. "Quit it, Rogley. Why do you care so much about twelve, anyway? She's just a thirteen year old runt who's going to die in this stupid freaking sandstorm, as you said, 'any minute now.'"

She leaned back against the wall a little closer, and a cocoon of woven wool nets dropped on top of her. She shrieked and ran out the entrance, being blinded by the literal "wool over eyes" moment. What she didn't know was that wool was a highly static material, despite its insulator qualities. Provided that the entire sandstorm set up was man made and charged within an inch of the gamemakers' own lives, I wasn't at all shocked when a flash of lightning from the broiling sands shot down st her, leaving behind only the nasty scent of charred flesh.

Now, there were only four of us left. The last time someone from district twelve had made it into the last surviving four had been from Haymitch's game - the 50th annual Hunger Games. I sent a calculating little smirk at the ceiling, where I suspected a camera to be recording my every move.

When had I become so immune to the horrors of death? I killed two people by now, and yet nothing in my heart told me what I did was wrong. I was doing what I had to do to survive. To come back home to my family. To win.

"She's here! The girl from twelve is in here somewhere, setting up traps!" The boy from two shouted over the rumble of the sandstorm finally breaking through. The full force of it all slammed against the side of the cornucopia's bronze walls, throwing everyone, including me, off balance. The scarf wrapped around my head, allowing a bare slit for my vision, protected me from the intense whip of sharp grain throwing themselves in, even from behind the crates. Electricity crackled right at the entrance again, hitting Amaria's corpse once more and trailing out on the surrounding ground.

I strutted out from behind the crates, knowing that this pivotal moment had to have everyone at the edge of their seats. I needed to look confident; in complete control of my actions. "You're right. 'She' _is_ here." And then yanked a wire cord wrapped around my fingers.

Previously, while waiting for the tributes to show up, I had tagged the outside areas of the cornucopia with slivers of wire, hoping to god that they wouldn't wash away in the storm. After climbing on top of the structure, I knotted a trident onto the roof. The explosives set off one by one, gathering more and more charge until a lightning bolt hit through the metal trident and sent electric currents through the walls. Given the thunderous. murderous explosions, and hailing sands outside, the remaining few tributes latched against the walls with all their strength. I strode out to the middle of the cornucopia, letting the winds slice through my skin. The other tributes howled obscene threats, but still took shelter to the sides, clutching the _metal_ walls.

Perfect.

"I. Am. Lightning!" I cackled over the howling weather, knowing that victory was mine. And, as expected, the outside blackened and then everything turned blindingly white.

* * *

I woke up to a whirring hum of machinery. My eyes cracked open… then promptly shut back closed. Everything seemed much too bright. Too much light. Too much whiteness.

"Oh, good, you're awake."

Fuck. Unwillingly, I opened my eyes completely and stared emptily at the soft blue paneled ceiling tiles.

A doctor wearing mint green scrubs (they used scrubs in the Capitol? I always had a vague idea that everyone wore pretty dresses all the time) peered down my empty eyes, patting here and there to check on a few itchy scratches all around my body. "Congratulations on winning the sixty-ninth Hunger Games, Miss Hawthorne. However, during the games, your body sustained a number of injuries. Especially that last stunt you pulled. Simply marvelous for the screen, but unfortunately a lot of work for the medical team."

A hazy few memories trickled into my brain. "...I was…" I coughed from scratchy, unused vocal cords. "Lightning?"

He seemed to understand what I was trying to get at. "Ah, yes. Ingenious idea to use the lightning against everybody like that. Even more ferocious and dangerous than Beetee Latier's games. At least he didn't also electrocute himself in the process."

"I can feel all my limbs and extremities, though," I pointed out, wiggling under the covers as proof. He smiled sympathetically.

"We've never had to deal with lightning burns before, so I'm afraid your beautiful skin will remain blemished for the rest of your life. Creams and gels may help, but there isn't much we can do besides body paint or dying your skin. We can offer you the chance to redye the scars back to your lustrous olive tan tones, if you'd like." He pulled out a simple mirror and handed it over to me.

Criss-cross patches of shiny white scars pulled tightly over my shoulders, trailing down my right arm and spine in a chaotic abandon. Overall, it wasn't really bad. The fresh skin needed training to prove flexible again, but it wasn't as ruinous as the doctor made it out to be. The Capitol people wanted perfection, but these scars were only proof of my battle. I was proud and disgusted at the same time by the marring, but it wasn't like they were hugely disfiguring or smashing my main features into an ugly blob. My face wasn't even harmed. Besides, it looked kinda cool, like actual lightning.

"No reconstruction," I told him. "Don't you think the Capitol would eat up that lightning girl now has a lightning scar?"

He sighed heavily and told me to do what I wanted, as it was automatically my choice to keep the scars. Body modifications, though, they had to be approved by a medical board. Enobaria's sharpened teeth modifications had been an interesting choice for the medical board to let slide by, but I guessed that anybody would feel pressured into anything when stared straight down by a victor who won through brutal violence.

A victor. Wait. She was a victor. _I_ was a victor.

I won.

"I won," I repeated numbly. "I did it. I won."

The doctor hummed absently while pulling up a hologram screen from his watch and tapping down a few notes. "Yes, you did. Your full medical report and all the injuries we healed is on the screen at the base of the bed. When you woke up, I alerted your prep and stylist team to take you back to your quarters. They should be arriving shortly. In the meantime, congratulations on your victory."

And then he strutted out the infirmary room, leaving me to my thoughts. My family. They knew I won. They knew that I had survived the games, that I was coming back to them. Against my will, little tears began to fall and snot dripped from my nose. I used my sore arms to rub away the runny liquids, knowing Potentia would be the type of person to make a huge ordeal out of a few tears. Even though my face was surely red and puffy, however, the prep and stylist team burst into the room a scant few minutes later and cheered loudly for my victory.

They whisked me to another room in an unfamiliar building, where Flavius, Venia, and Octavia set on scrubbing every last speck of dirt remaining from the games from my body. They tutted at the white scarring, but Potentia had the brilliant idea of redesigning my victory dress to accentuate the damaged tissue.

I zoned out throughout the many hour process, barely able to hold everything in. Boom. Sound of a cannon. Boom. Someone's dead. Boom. Another innocent child. Had the girl from ten died from exposure? From the sandstorm? Had she woken up in the middle of the night to feel the sand ripping into her eardrums, to feel the heaviness of the air choking her from the inside? Did the winds funnel into tornadoes to carry her body in shreds? How did her eyes feel as the sand burned into them, blinding her forever?

"..re... Blaire... Blaire. Blaire! Hello? You in there?" A calloused hand waved before my eyes. I blinked a few times to get out of my funk, to realize the situation. Haymitch waved his hands in front of my eyes until he recognized the sudden clarity behind them.

Haymitch. He was here. "Haymitch," I breathed out, thinking about the antibacterial cream sent on the second day. My forgiveness. Had he heard that? Fuck. I didn't want to talk about anything right now while the deaths of half a dozen children rang so clearly though my ears. Brutal. Cold blooded. A killer. Murderer.

"Hey, sweetheart. How're you holding up?" He murmured in a soft, low tone.

With another few blinks, I glanced around the room and realized my stylists must have left a while ago. It was just the two victors of district twelve, in a starkly empty room closed off from the rest of the world by the heavy blinds and locked doors.

"Told you," I mumbled incoherently, then burst into ugly sobbing. Told you I'd win. Told you I'd do anything to win the games. Told you I'd do anything - even kill innocent children. Told you I'd... I'd kill. Kill. And kill. And kill.

A murderer.

From a teacher's assistant to a murderer. From a woman in a little girl's body to a ruthless killer in a little girl's body.

"Hey, hey, just let it all out, alright? I'm right here." The only other victor for twelve eased, not once providing the comfort of touch. Perhaps it was for the better if he didn't try to grasp me, because all I could see under my closed eyes was embracing the boy from eight's corpse and dragging it behind those crates. Hiding the body. Hiding the evidence. Hiding the shame, just so more children would be lured into the death trap.

After a while, the sobs diminished into dry hiccups and the puffiness from salty tears and rubbing the tender skin below my eyes felt slightly painful. I tried speaking but no words came out.

"You're not a monster," Haymitch said, seemingly reading my mind. "You're a survivor. You survived the games so now you get to see your family again. You had a twin brother, was it? And some younger brothers and a baby sister? And remember during your interview, you said it yourself that your mom was the best mom ever. Think about how you get to see them again, get to see your family live in Victor's Village."

Mom. Gale. Vick. Rory. Posy. I said all their names, in age order, out loud. And again. And again, and again, and again.

"For them. You get to see them again," he whispered. His voice wobbled, and that's when I knew he wasn't just trying to assure me, he was also ruminating on his own past. Just nineteen years ago, he had been the happiest ever. Winner of the second quarter quell, lived in a mansion with his mother and younger brother, alongside a wonderful girlfriend.

And then President Snow shot them down like disobedient dogs when he refused to be pimped out.

A flash of fear coursed through my veins. "I don't want them to die!" I choked out, on my feet and definitely on edge. "They can't, they can't!"

"Whoa, whoa, Blaire. They aren't going anywhere. You need to sit down."

"They're going to die because I don't want to become a prostitute for Snow!" I warbled, staring straight at the locked door. It was locked, yes. No one could get in. Time to examine the door. Time to make sure no one could get in the clutches of Snow. No. Never. Keep them safe.

Haymitch pushed me back onto my chair with enough force to stun me for long enough for him to clasp my shoulder, the one with the lightning scars, so tight I could barely move upwards. "Blaire. What makes you think Snow's going to make you a prostitute?"

The seriousness of his voice made me pause. It made me stop. Think. Pause. I let something slip out. I let it slip out to Haymitch I knew about what happened to victors after the games. The lovers. The sponsors. The clients. The highest bidders. I almost thought about trying to reverse time and not emerging victorious, but I remembered my family would be devastated. Heartbroken. I thought about mom's bleeding fingertips after a long day of work and I knew I did the best thing for them.

I won. And to keep winning, I needed to clear my mind and think of what to say now, to amend the situation.

"I don't believe for a second that Finnick Odair has a string of lovers in the Capitol. Not when Augustus Bran, last year's winner, is just as handsome and popular, but the news of his family's passing had been shut down quicker than I can say my own name. Of course there's someone wanting to be paid back for their efforts of sponsoring a victor. What better way to do it than for the victor themselves to _personally_ thank them?" I spat out.

His eyes hardened for confirmation. "You're much more intelligent than you look," he sighed. "I'm sorry I can't do anything to protect you, but Snow can't legally touch you until you're sixteen."

"Legally. Can't legally touch me. That's reassuring." The snark was more of a defensive measure behind all the hurting, but I tried retracting my spiked tongue to ease Haymitch's mind. He had a fellow victor, now. The last thing he needed was a victor with more pent up anger than his own alcoholic self.

A pattern knocked on the door. "Blaire? Potentia's finished your dress," Venia spoke through the industrial metal doors. As a truce, I took Haymitch's offered hand to lift myself up. Apologizing for the outburst was out of the question, but at least he'd know I didn't hate him. He even held up as a true mentor and somehow provided a sponsor gift.

Outside, Venia led me to a new room in the foreign hallway. "Where are we?" I asked, looking around for any clues.

"The Victor's Spire," Octavia answered as the door opened. "Haymitch and Effie will collect you once you're ready. Oh, you're going to look fabulous!"

And I did.

They first sprayed me in a light sheen of golden body glitter so I became a sparkling vampire. Minus the vampire part. They painted my nails, eyelids, and cheekbones a bronze-y gold to match plum lined lips and a deep violet skater dress. The back and arms were exposed, perfectly revealing the white scars. Flavius painted concealing cream along the edges of the scars to shape them into more manageable designs for viewer ratings, taking away the messy and uncontrolled part of my wounds.

"Your eyes really pop out with the make up," they sighed dreamily, twirling and snipping my hair into even bangs. I never wore bangs. I automatically hated it. They also made me look at least two years older with the sharp lines of make up, and the style of the dress over accentuated body parts my pubescent body didn't quite have.

Nonetheless, I thanked them for their services.

Effie and Haymitch waited outside the door, feet tapping. I found my anxiety levels growing from the constant pattering of Effie's heels clacking against the polished floors.

"Oh, our gorgeous victor! Look at you, absolutely beautiful! You can't believe how excited I am for you!" Effie pounced on me immediately, running her bony hands over my taffeta skater dress and examining the delicately painted nails. Her normalcy made my lips quiver into a smile for the first time since waking up. Sweet, sweet Effie. Just a Capitol lady through and through, ignorant of all the pain and suffering. Her ignorance made me hate and love her at the same time.

They hustled me into the elevator, then we all descended down to ground level where a crowd gathered outside.

"The first victor for district twelve in a long time!" Some cheered, citing "underdog."

"The third ever victor for district twelve for the past sixty nine years!"

"The youngest victor to win the games!"

The roaring of the crowd lulled when we made it to our car to travel to the filming headquarters, where the interviews took place just over a week ago. But the monumental cheers and shouts and screams pounded in my ears, even in the effective silence of the car. It reminded me of the gong of the games commencing, the crash of a cannon being released, the roar of thunder, the whir of winds picking up sands, and the ringing stop to it all when all the lightning came whizzing down. Haymitch said something, but I just smiled and nodded, not wanting to make an effort to hear him.

The car pulled into a private lot, and we were offered reprieve from the crowds in the awkward ride up an elevator and to the backstage of the sixty ninth Hunger Games finishing ceremony. At the end of every game, President Snow personally crowns each victor, then the victor and the two legendary hosts watch a strictly three hour long edited film based on their own journey in the games. This became the official episode for the year - the one the television screens repeated constantly in loops. Each year, these films were apart of the required viewing for all of Panem. All of Panem watching me kill children, while were in the games voluntarily, were also victims to the system.

The grand speech alongside Claudius Templesmith and Caesar Flickerman felt empty. I didn't understand the sarcastic words my body used defensively, but the audience seemed to enjoy it, cheering at the appropriate times and often whistling in appreciation of some snarky comment added here and there. They liked the girl with teeth. They liked lightning girl. They _liked_ me.

But it couldn't be mistaken with love. No, they didn't love me. They didn't know me, no matter how many days they watched me struggle and bleed in a stupid desert. I barely knew them, either. The Capitoleans ranged from someone as haplessly nice as Effie and Potentia to someone as morally conniving as President Snow and his government officials.

And when President Snow clamored up the stairs to place a crown on my head, all I could think of was how much I wanted to bash his face in. His hair was snow white, the smell of roses was balking, and a trace of blood from the sores in his mouth leaked through when he congratulated my victory. His cunning pale blue eyes looked straight into mine in a curious manner, as if he didn't know what to do with me or how to manipulate me. But when he returned to his place in the nosebleed section of the crowd, a glint of satisfaction returned as Flickerman asked me about my family.

This year's film started off seguing into all the districts, then finally to mine, where the dusty faces of hard working coal miners and the weariness in the eyes of the starving were more highlighted than usual. They flashed forward to me during the training period, where I looked better fed and happier with life in the Capitol. And then through my progression in the games, occasionally allowing other tributes to shine whenever they did something particularly impacting to the audience. They skipped through my injury and Haymitch's gift, focusing on my clever traps and battles with the bird mutations in the fight for water. When I fell backwards into the ravine, the entire audience gasped and completely stilled. I didn't know why they reacted like that. They watched the games during its entire airing. Why look surprised now?

The gamemakers and crew produced the finale in a cut-throat action sequence, with Amaria's screams echoing intensely, her panicked breaths as she ran out into the sandstorm, then no background noise at all when lightning struck down right through her. I sounded like a mad scientist at the time of my cackle and the heavily dramatized "I am lightning" last words. I had the distinct feeling that that would become my catch phrase to haunt me to my grave. Lightning girl. I am lightning. The mad genius. A crazy scientist. A thirteen year old girl killing everyone on sight using deviously laid out traps.

The applause when the screening ended was passionate. I smiled and waved at the cameras, thinking only about Gale and how he felt about my winning. Would he still hunt, now that we had all the money in the world? Would he still forge a close bond with the future girl on fire, unknowingly aiding her in becoming the best hunter in all of Panem?

No, he'd never stop his passions. He enjoyed hunting just as much as I enjoyed whittling toys for Posy, as much as I enjoyed climbing tall trees at six in the morning just to see the sun rise into pretty pinks and oranges from the best vantage point.

The rest of the day passed by in a flash. After the thunderous victory ceremony, Haymitch and Effie dragged me to a floor in the Victor's Spire, a sleek jet black triangular prism shaped building dedicated for victors to stay at whenever they visited the Capitol. I didn't want to be alone, but Haymitch didn't deserve being burdened with my broken and freshly traumatized self, so I sat in my new apartment suite with absolutely nothing on my mind.

A party established downstairs for the mentors of other tributes to celebrate the end of the sixty ninth Hunger Games, but I wasn't particularly in the mood to celebrate the onslaught of my future mental health check ups.

I woke up at sunrise after having cried myself to sleep. The added mental energy from getting a full night's rest not drowning in sand or parched of water helped motivate me to take a shower and finally scrub away at all the makeup from the day before that now caked itself onto my brand new pillow case. Oh well. No matter for the powerful yet gentle laundry units tucked away in the back rooms.

The film from yesterday played over and over again in my head as I mindlessly entered Haymitch's private quarters without knocking. I settled myself on a love seat in front of a painting of a basket of bread and mused about what the film's theme had been. I hadn't paid much attention to anything yesterday, so I didn't know what to think. Had it been the fall of a sweet child into a dangerously mad genius? The struggle for survival from a poor district twelve girl?

The bread basket painting nearly the size of the entire wall alarmed me, mainly because it reminded me of Peeta. Peeta Mellark. And then I outright laughed at the irony of Haymitch having a bread painting. Would Peeta one day see this and also laugh?

"You were right," a deep voice cracked from behind. I didn't turn around, just taking in the painting as a whole. Rye bread, pumpernickel bread, whole wheat bread, raisin bread...

"When you said, 'told you,' I didn't understand what you meant until now." Haymitch settled in the couch next to me, cupping a mug of coffee. "You were willing to sacrifice everything to win. Even your sanity."

I continued laughing because I didn't like what he was currently insinuating. Laughing was better than crying. Laughing represented happiness. Happiness represented positivity and positivity was good. But yet, why did I feel so hollow inside?

"Everyone's a little insane," I deflected after the bout of giggles quenched. "We're all traveling down the rabbit hole. Some faster than others."

He drank his coffee while I stared at the painting in silence.

"You need a hobby," he interrupted the silence after a while. I suspected his mug empty. "All victors pick up their quirks because it keeps them occupied. The Capitol calls them 'talents' when they check up on you during your victory tour."

Haymitch drank his sorrows away. I remembered seeing Mags, the old district four mentor who had to be the oldest victor alive from winning the eleventh Hunger Games, with a pair of knitting needles while on stage for last year's reaping ceremony broadcasted on the television. Gale and I cut class that day to watch the reaping reruns at the Justice Building's outdoor screens. Perhaps she wove nets or made baskets or scarves to keep her own sorrows away.

"I like whittling; Gale traded in hard earned meat to buy me a whittling knife a few years ago." An odd thought occurred to me. "Do you know what happened to my token?"

My little elephant toy. A sense of home in the arena, where I'd toss and turn in the scratchy sands and clutch onto the elephant for a reminder of the piney scent of the mountains beyond the fencing.

To my dismay, he shook his head. "Destroyed in the lightning that marked up your arm." He jerked his head at my exposed arm. The closets had been remarkably bursting with designer clothes in my own private quarters, but I had only pulled on a simple black tank top and olive green maxi skirt for the sake of other people. Running around naked, no matter how comfortable it may be, would have made me seem more fucked up in the head than I was letting on.

"I'll make more, then. Got any furniture you don't like?" As tragic as losing the elephant was, now it was time to make something new. A new gift for Gale. Expensive new toys for Posy. The best shoes for the twins so they could run around in the mud all day long. A chance for mom to not work back breaking shifts and scrub her hands raw at the washboard.

In an hour, the sun peeked brightly from behind the half closed blinds. Haymitch read a leather bound book with a smudged up title I didn't bother making out while I whittled and carved away at a piece of a mahogany table leg he detested for no apparent reason other than that it was mahogany. Something about Effie complaining about her favorite type of wood or whatever.

I smoothed out all the notches with a carbon steel apple knife stolen from his kitchen and presented the quietly reading man with the piece of art. A batch of primrose flowers, each petal carved delicately as wet paper. Perhaps he'd find irony in the gift during five years from now, just as I had found irony in the painting of bread.

"You should be partying alongside the rest of the Capitol," he drawled, raising an eyebrow at the offered wooden batch of flowers.

"Primrose flowers," I said instead. "My gift to you. For the medicine."

He took it wordlessly.

* * *

At sundown the Victory Banquet took place in the President's mansion. Walking into the lair of the snake made chills creep up my spine, but I ignored it largely in favor of the crowd. Hundreds or even thousands of people danced around in a humongous ball room with glittering chandeliers and ornaments draped over Roman sculptures and marble carved pillared walls. A vast buffet of delightful food platters occupied the entire dining table - where my entire team and I were able to sit. My prep team weren't of high enough ranking to be apart of the dining table, but I could see Flavius' purple hair spikes peeking out among the crowd of dancers. Haymitch to my right, Effie to my left, and Potentia to Effie's left. President Snow and a few gamemakers sat at the head of the table, thankfully far away enough from me.

The entire affair was much too loud. Too much noise in one place. I wanted to run away and cover my ears while rocking back and forth, but Haymitch's presence kept me tethered to the ground. He, however, drank glass after glass of bright red wine - leading an example I didn't want to resort to. My methods of coping were far less destructive than his, so I kept thinking about looking forward to heading back to my empty room in the Victor's Spire to chip away a new creation. Perhaps a tiger lily. Or a bunny. Maybe something hard enough to keep myself occupied for days on end, like a toadstool village.

The feast lasted until the barest trickles of light returned back in the sky. I was completely dead on my feet, only surviving through the remaining half hour to reach the Victor's Spire by Effie's loud insistence on taking a bright pink pill. While not complete rejuvenation, it did help clear all the mud wading through my mind and helped me all the way until I all but collapsed on my bed.

Unfortunately, sleep evaded me.

Throughout the bare few hours I managed to cram in, I dreamt of the coppery stench of blood, white flashes of lightning, and the boy from eight's weight in my arms as I dragged him away. When it was revealed to me that I was instead clutching onto a pillow for dear life, I kicked it away.

Knowing that Haymitch slept throughout the day, I curled up in the soft and plush Capitol made bed, trying to wash away the remnants of the dream in my quivering arms. After an indeterminable amount of time, my stomach growled for food. I dragged myself to the shower first, washing away last night's makeup and sweaty hair after being forced to dance with a countless number of fans. Most dances followed a flowing leader-follower step by step process, so I imagined not having done too shabby. Not stepping on anybody's shoes counted as a win, right?

The Victor's Spire had a mess hall and lounge area somewhere on the first floor, but I didn't feel in the right mind to sit besides the mentors of kids I killed. Regardless, the games scarred everyone in their own distinct ways, and having the newest example of the games before their eyes wouldn't lead to the greatest results. My kitchen, thankfully, came fully stocked with catering call buttons and fresh produce. Not wanting to socialize with anyone, even if it was a speechless avox bringing food for less than ten seconds, I snacked on three apples and called it good enough.

The door opened - were there no locks in this place? - and Effie, Potentia, and my prep team flitted through just as I threw away the last apple core.

"Oh, there's our lovely victor!" Effie chimed, reaching out for a hug. I obliged, only because ignoring her would indict a lengthy lecture about politeness and manners. I had manners, thank you very much.

My prep team dragged me into the bathroom, allowing the bare modicum of privacy away from the literally wide open front door, and began stripping me. They didn't view me as human, more like a living doll, so there was no shame in being in the nude in front of them. They yammered on about doing another full body polish and taming my spiky locks, but I slipped back into a zone where nothing mattered.

In the end, my hair was redone into sleek blunt bangs framed with side locks. The back puffed up like a duck butt, but Flavius assured about how it was all in the trends these days. His purple spikes definitely not withstanding, I noted irritably. Potentia's dress made me look older, again, and I wanted to rip the fabric off my body. It didn't sexualize me like the last dress did, but I abhorred the idea of craven sponsors bidding pieces of me as soon as I reached the legal age of consent.

Everyone whisked me away, including a sleep deprived Haymitch wearing a rumpled dress suit, all the way to a car driving away to the entertainment headquarters.

"Remember, cute does the trick. The Capitol thinks it's funny how an innocent little girl hid a massive genius brain and killed the last remaining tributes in a fell swoop," Haymitch gruffed out at the tail of the car ride, looking less pleased about the final interview than I did.

Reminding me about the deaths on my hands made it harder to get into the persona of someone innocent yet devilish. Camera crews and producers parted to allow our team to enter the filming location, somewhere on the fifth floor. Caesar Flickerman greeted us with his trademark smile and gentle eyes.

"How are you doing today, young miss?" He asked just as the cameras began rolling.

I wrangled my lips into a smart smile. "Obviously, a lot better than a few days ago, when I was still stuck in a burning desert."

A laugh track echoed around us. It took all of my carefully honed self control to not jump in surprise. I had really thought that the laughs in the background came from a live audience. Was the footage used of a live audience a digitally made segment?

"She's got some fire to her," Flickerman whooped out. I saw Haymitch and Effie give a thumbs up from their position behind the camera crew. Strange, since my mentor had never really needed to assure me before. And then I noticed my trembling hands and I set them under my thighs, as if warming them.

"Fire? But I thought my new moniker was 'lightning girl,'" I drawled out, indicting another laugh track episode.

The interview lasted maybe an hour of witty remarks and Caesar Flickerman begging for me to turn around to reveal my back to the cameras, where they caught plenty of shots of the white markings shooting down my spine. The scars ended at the same height of my belly button, so Potentia's dress thankfully ended at an appropriate height. If the scars reached down any lower, I had no doubt she'd tailor the dress to reveal an entire buttock.

All my energy drained into appearing lively and happy during the interview, so once the cameras stopped airing, I slumped back into my chair and groaned about needing more sleep. Flickerman said something about growing girls needed their rest, but was whisked off by his own managers before finishing his sentence.

"You did great, sweetheart," Haymitch patted my back on our way back to the Victor's Spire. "Our train leaves at seven p.m. We'll arrive five p.m. back in district twelve on the twenty-first."

July twenty-first. The reaping ceremony had been the fourth of July. How many days without my family? I didn't want to do the basic maths and stare at the number in my mind's eye. But because I hated myself, I subtracted the amounts and repeated the number seventeen like a mantra. Seventeen. Seventeen. Over two weeks of separated from a family where everyone was raised within a cramped little shack of a house and saw each other every morning and every night before bed.

"Time to go home," I warbled, dragging out of a car when we reached the spire. "Time to go..."

Haymitch looped my arms around his neck and carried me into my room, ignoring the messy trails of tears and snot staining the front of his dress shirt.


	6. Chapter 6

**Dreamers Live to Die**

**I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]**

**Published 2020.01.31**

* * *

Gale had always known his sister was smart. He had seen the curious glint in her eye during a particularly brutal school fight out on the recess field one day and acknowledged her casual comment of the general anatomy the students were hitting. He didn't know how Blaire knew about the technical terms for muscle groups in the bodies, but chalked it up reading too much to the ever growing "weird things Blaire does" shelf in his brain. He knew how she acted like an adult, confusingly mature at times he wanted to throw tantrums, and sometimes only just conversed with him about his daily struggles in math class out of boredom of a long day. She was unnaturally canny, too, having known and taught him how to look out for poisonous foods in the forests by watching how other animals interact with it. If birds and squirrels ate it, then humans most likely could, too.

She helped raise him alongside their mother, as much as he hated to admit. She felt much more like an older sister than his twin, where he was even six minutes older. Perhaps there were times when he was younger and more prideful that made him want to hate Blaire, to envy her brain, to distance himself away from her so he'd stop being "the other twin" or the "not as gifted" twin.

Somehow, in the bottom of his heart, he always always knew that if her name was drawn during the reapings, she'd win the games with resounding flourish.

And that she did. By outsmarting her remaining opponents, using electricity and wires and other gizmos and gadgets and mechanical terms the adults gossiped about but never really fully understood because that was _Capitol_ technology, not a simple coal miner's. How she knew how to utilize technologies and sciences that most adults in their district couldn't even pronounce was what confused him. How she completely obliterated Career tributes by directing a lightning bolt during a sandstorm right down their spines. How she fought off several beastly bird mutations all on her own in heart-stopping, death defying stunts.

The night of the final battle in the cornucopia sandstorm set the entirety of district twelve into festivities. People in the Seam all the way to the merchants section cheered wildly in the streets for her victory, taping homemade banners and posters and decorations all around the city. People stopped work and school just to plan for the homecoming celebration. The influx of money just from her return and victory set everyone in good spirits, especially the children jumping rope and spinning on the rickety playground merry-go-round. District twelve's first victor in nineteen years, who had seemed to be against impossible odds. Barely thirteen. Not even ninety pounds soaking wet, or even eighty by now, judging by the conservative amount of lizard pickings she ate during her time in the arena. Short. Young. Dewy eyed little girl, facing an entire Career pack. And then came the indescribable ring of explosives from the screens. At first, many people panicked that the noise came from outside, that one of the mines burst open so great it could be heard all the way to the neighborhoods. And then more explosions set in and his sister manipulating thin bronze wires connected to radiating power systems revealed to be the case.

She was smart, wise, wily, and witty.

Yet, as the doors of the Justice Building opened and she and her mentor and that outrageous Capitol escort sent two years ago walked out, he saw none of that in the foreign girl waving her hand and smiling like a loony.

That didn't look like his sister. That looked like a stranger. Due to being the victor's family, all five of them stood in the front row of the cheering crowd. Nobody noticed the emptiness of her eyes, the hollowness of her smile, the dimmed emotion glowing so fake and radiant on her face. Nobody but him.

She looked just as thin as the day she left, which meant the Capitol hadn't been feeding her well or something truly_ was_ wrong. Unfortunately, the latter could only be true.

When the remaining members of the Hawthorne clan were called up to congratulate and hug Blaire half to death, he ignored everything wrong about the situation and the girl to just hug the living daylights out of her. She yelped in her familiar squeaky voice, holding back tears in front of the numerous cameras about how much he'd grown and that he was shooting up like a weed, but he didn't care. All he cared about was that his twin was back safe and sound and now there was nothing to worry about. No more long winters, no more putting in more tesserae for more oil, no more wondering what time the other would be coming home from their jobs.

Unfortunately, the Capitol hadn't been able to erase the scars from her mind. Besides the long streaks of white lightning on her arm and back, her skin shone bright and clean like one of those porcelain dolls Posy looked longingly for in front of expensive shop displays. But her mind was never fully going to heal. He could barely bring himself to watch every Hunger Games, so he couldn't even imagine what it felt like to be _in_ the games.

In the following days, they moved to a house across from Haymitch Abernathy, that old drunk, in Victor's Village. The new house - no, _mansion_ \- was a dream. An exorbant amount of room able to fit maybe a dozen of their old house in the new one, working electricity and gas stoves and enough fireplaces for a small coal mine. Everyone now had their own room to run around and play in, including Vick and Rory who pretty much screamed about having their own bathroom and not complaining about the other hogging the toilet. Gale enjoyed his mornings of heading to the bakery and purchasing expensive cheese and strawberry strudels, where he then shocked his little siblings with the beautiful, bountiful breakfast. He even brought the Everdeens a bag of fresh pastries, as if apologizing for not needing to hunt with Katniss any longer. Of course, he hunted with her anyway, wanting to let out pent up stress and to help his best friend feed her family.

But the first of August represented the start of hurricane season. Normally, he enjoyed hunting big, fat frogs in running streams throughout hurricane season, but the day the first storm thundered in was the day Blaire's careful facade of being okay began to crack.

* * *

The idea of rain and being drenched on sounded absolutely wonderful, considering the waves of dry heat district twelve had been receiving the entire summer. But I hadn't thought about what brought on rain. Thunder. Hordes of thunderclouds, all crackling with lightning energy. The first strike glared through my bedroom window, alighting features no doubt petrified with fear. I couldn't speak, couldn't think, couldn't _breathe_ as the sky rumbled and groaned and screamed in my ears.

Lightning girl, afraid of lightning and thunder. How ironic.

Waves of pain rippled through my coiled, too tight muscles, but I couldn't bring myself to relax. The weather seemed to be wholly against my very being, reaching out and tearing off bits of my soul and sanity. Someone creaked the door open, said a few blurry words, then carried me somewhere where the sound became more muffled and bits of warmth from a fireplace sparked through. This room functioned on gross kerosene lamps, but the burning stench of smoke and flames calmed me a bit. Like a bee. I laughed at the comparison, but whoever carried me here seemed to think the laughing was crying and layered me in thick, fluffy blankets. No matter. I went straight to sleep at the person's humming and comforting scent.

Waking up was strange, as it was the first time I hadn't been plagued by nightmares ever since I got out of that arena with burning sands and slicing winds. The answer came in the form of Gale curled up against me. It reminded me of a time when we were four years old and he clambered into my bed for cuddles because he didn't want to sleep alone after a vivid nightmare. Content and carefully ignoring the outside weather, I snuggled back inside his arms, ages be damned. No one was too old to be comforted.

I woke up again when the sun shone brightly through bedroom windows - it seemed as though I had been displaced again. Gale must be stronger than previously thought.

In the past two weeks since arriving home, the days rolling by became nightmarish in intensity. I avoided sleep as much as possible, preferring to cramp myself in my crowded wood studio alongside my plentiful creations. My rich new clothes began sagging off my bony body as I stopped eating, having lost my appetite forever ago. But the shock of having intense trauma for something as common as thunder made me realize that I couldn't go on like this. More and more thunder clouds would appear as the season progressed, and it wasn't like I could just hole up in my studio and tinker away, ignoring my family. They needed me to be safe, happy, and healthy. So I rolled out of bed and, for the first time since coming back, joined the rest of my family for breakfast.

Mom baked blueberry muffins and scrambled eggs with salt and basil this sunny morning.

"You're awake," she smiled, handing me a plate from the counter top. "Join your siblings in the dining room."

She pretended nothing was wrong, as if Gale hadn't told her about my breakdown. As if my depression and anxiety didn't matter to her. Because I was still her daughter.

In response, I kissed her cheek and gave a real smile since coming home, cradling the hot plate as mom set the remaining muffins in cool on the granite counter top.

The first person to speak up about my appearance was Posy. "I missed you," she squealed from her baby stool at the front of the table. I peppered her forehead with wet kisses, enjoying the giggles they caused to erupt.

"You're eating now," Vick noted with pride. "And Rory said that you were going to shrivel into a twig."

"Hey!" Rory yelled. "I didn't say nothin'!"

While disturbing the twins thought that of my body, mom chewing Rory out for yelling at the table (again) became a topic of hilarity. I inhaled my breakfast with surprising gusto and drank nearly half a pitcher of apple juice. That's what I got for only nibbling on snacks the past few weeks, I mused.

When it was time for the three boys to head to school, Gale's raised eyebrows asked if I was to join them. I thought long and hard about making an appearance at school. Dozens of kids cramming themselves into my periphery to ask everything about the Capitol and the Hunger Games. At the sole thought of having to talk about the games one more time, I nearly broke the glass of apple juice in my hand.

"Have a good day at school!" I waved my brothers farewell at the doorstep, watching them walk down the polished cobblestone roads of Victor's Village alongside mom holding Posy in her arms.

After they left our vision, the silence ensuing with a bubbly Posy wrangling herself out of mom's arms and running around the first floor.

Mom tucked her curly black hair into a loose ponytail and sighed. "Blaire. I understand if you want to be alone in your studio all day, but we miss you. Your family misses you. Please - ."

I cut her off with a hug. "Don't worry, mom. I'm here now. Maybe not entirely here, but I'll try to come down more. I don't want to push you away."

To distract ourselves from crying, we cleaned up the breakfast tables and did the dishes. She filled me in on what I'd missed in casual sentences, as if just reminding me about something I'd just forgotten. Mom had quit her job as a laundry woman and now filled her days by trying to be a more involved parent to her kids. She developed a new hobby of cooking and baking, as we could now afford to by these luxury items at the grocers and markets, instead of just the sludgy grey grain and squirrel meat previously adorning our plates. While continuing our long overdue mother-daughter bonding time, she taught me how to make a variety of soups and stews out of fancy vegetables from the markets. I learned that Posy started learning how to brush her own teeth and hair and could climb onto her own chairs now. Rory was won the school hundred-meter dash, while Vick won the boy's wrestling competition for his age group. She mentioned the second place wrestler was the sweet, lovely baker's son and my thoughts immediately went to Peeta. But Peeta had to be around eleven right now, and Vick was eight. Did Peeta have younger siblings? I didn't remember.

When the first stew, a spicy paprika, sausage, and vegetable based stew, was done, mom poured half of it on a large wooden bowl with a glass lid and told me to give it to our neighbor.

Haymitch. My mentor.

Did he even want to see me? Was he capable of normal human interaction outside the capitol?

While mom helped Posy prepare for her nap, I waddled out the door in my special new sandals and cream colored sundress. Puddles from last night's storm gathered at basins along pipelines, so there were none to splash in on the short walk across the street. Knowing better than to knock, I rammed straight in, holding the bowl in my arms resolutely. Time to face the music.

The stench of nineteen years of neglect hit like a bulldozer. Little tears pricked at the corners of my eyes from the rancid smells, but I soldiered on to the living room, where I found the greasy haired man asleep in a pile of empty bottles of Ripper's specialty white liquor.

"Wake up," I commanded, settling the pot of piping hot stew on the only place on the table not polluted by alcohol stains and liquor bottles. "Hey. Hey, wake up."

When was the last time the man had eaten real food? The capitol? How did he even survive in his cave of sorrows? Knowing the only thing that could wake him up now was a bucket of cold water, I trembled on around his lonely mansion. The other floors weren't even in use anymore, swamped in a layer of dust. Even the unoccupied houses were taken better care of, as the haggard groundskeeper did try to clean the other ten just in case anymore victors popped up.

I entered my own, obviously lived-in house, and helped mom with the remainder of the stews and soups. I barely had the chance to ask why she had so much food lined out before a bunch of vaguely familiar women rang the doorbell and trampled on in. Apparently, there was a school party celebrating the long career of Miss Milligan, who decided to retire to her cozy cottage off in the merchants section, alongside her husband who recently entrusted his shoe shop to their nephews. Most school parties didn't involve providing meals, instead playing big group games and cheering on the winners. But with mom's ability to feed the hundred or so students with the victory money, well. It was almost expected of her, as she had four school aged children and too much money for even this generation. Today many children would be able to experience countless bowls of steaming hot lunches.

The moms carried the pots of stews and soups away, leaving me alone with a napping Posy upstairs. Posy slept in mom's room. Neither of them wanted to sleep alone, I guessed, as Posy was still too young and mom still mourned the empty hole in her heart from dad's death.

Not having anything else to do, I whittled away a variety of animal figurines next to Posy's crib, humming simple tunes from a life long ago.

* * *

I mustered up the courage to confront Haymitch the next morning after breakfast. But the undeniable stench of the years of neglect became all too much and I started cleaning up empty bottles and dead mice and bugs off his floors before considering talking to him. At nine a.m., he probably just went to bed, anyway. Or collapsed in his living room from drinking.

Surprisingly, he was no where to be found in the living room. The bowl of stew was found empty and thoroughly cleaned. I raced back home to put the pot away, and came back with industrial cleaning gloves and supplies.

It took a week of gathering up his junk and scrubbing away decade old stains off the furniture before declaring it livable again. All the windows I left open to air out the remaining nasty smells and headache inducing scent of cleaning solution. Mom approved of this new hobby, but didn't enjoy the fact that I decided not to return to school. Still, she never pushed the issue and let me do my own thing. My school friends never visited, which was a shame, as I had really thought they wanted to see me once Rory most likely gossiped I came back into sanity. For the most part.

That was fine. It stung, to be rejected by the people I sat next during lunch whenever Gale wasn't around, but they were children. I was closer in age to Haymitch and my mother, really. The man in question had to only be two years older, mentally.

Towards the end of August, Haymitch and I finally conversed again.

The hot, muggy late summer day made Gale and I just want to strip to our underclothes and splash around in the lake outside the fence, but he was too dutiful of a friend to Katniss to stop hunting with her for just even a day in prime hunting season. His worrying amount of devotion to a girl who'd never be able to return his feelings made me want to cut off their friendship, just to keep his heart intact. But then he'd never grow if I kept babying him, so I watched from the distance as he and the girl on fire grew closer and closer.

I bought two apple strudels from the bakery, where a small angel haired boy with the name-tag 'Peeta' clipped to his shirt pocket rang up my order, staring not discreetly at my paint splattered blouse.

"Do you like to paint?" He blurted out randomly as I tucked my wallet back into my skirt pocket.

I blinked. The paint splatters were from trying to bring vibrancy to my wooden figurines, as the most coloring they got was by what type of wood they were cut from. "Sorta. Not really."

His eyebrows furrowed in concentration during our awkward moment where he wanted to say something further but couldn't because I had already paid for my order. The fault laid on me, however, as I continued to loiter around the bodega.

"I like to paint," he yelped out in a quick stammer, as if his words were forbidden.

A terrible thought flitted through my mind. I tried to squash it down, but that became a futile effort. Another customer entered through the squeaky glass doors and the rest of my idea blurted out in quick recession. "That's cool. I've been looking for a painter for my art, since my brother recommended selling them. I'll talk to you about it during school tomorrow. Bye."

School. Tomorrow. Monday.

I groaned on the way back to the Victor's Village. Unbeknownst to the world, my way of heading back to school was by way of a blond eleven maybe twelve year old kid.

The rest of my mood soured as I headed through Haymitch's door for breakfast. Perhaps one in the afternoon was too late for breakfast, but I knew this was the time he started waking up for the day, anyway.

"Come on, you lazy old drunk," I said while bursting through his bedroom door. A surprising day whenever he actually slept up here. "I even brought you breakfast. Hope you're not allergic to apples."

He laid face-planted on his pillows, reeking of liquor. Not wanting to get stabbed in the eye for waking the man up the wrong way, I set the pastry bag down and flitted around every window, scrolling the blinds all the way up and opening the windows for fresh sunshine filled air to waft through his room. I didn't even know why I kept making sure he was alive. It wasn't as though he was ever awake whenever I deposited food and new clothes, anyway.

"You don't have to keep doing this," came Haymitch's low, growly voice. I whirled around, feeling the breeze lift my hair at the back. Or, whatever hair I had. It barely reached my jaw in the back.

But even at his protest, he looked better than he ever had in years. Filled in features, less gaunt eyes, an absence of sweat stained clothes. Perhaps whatever made him so attractive during his teen years was coming back after weeks of somewhat regular healthy eating and better personal hygiene.

"Maybe I do," I bit back, unsure of how to react of finally talking to him after weeks of nothing. "Maybe I'm trying to keep the one person alive in my district who actually knows what I've been through."

He sat up all bleary eyed and groggy. "If I've been a shit mentor, just say so."

"No. You weren't a shit mentor. You were great. You gave me honest advice and actually believed that I could win when you sent down that antibacterial cream. I just need you alive so I don't have to mentor countless number of kids alone every fucking year."

His mentor died shortly after he won the games. Shortly after he lost his mom, brother, and girlfriend. What did that leave him? Alone and miserable and with no one left. Nothing to live for. I was amazed that he kept on living after losing everything, but his moral compass to at least provide the children with someone to stand next to during their reaping overcame it all. I didn't know if I was strong enough to last losing my first tribute. Haymitch went through losing himself through the bottle, but I couldn't stand the idea of losing yourself so irrevocably to the point of hardly ever having sobriety.

And I had a mother. Brothers. A sister. Maybe even friends, however half-assed they were. The man before was alone. Had been completely alone for the past nineteen years. He made me feel privileged. Me, a girl from the Seam. All because I at least had someone who loved me.

"Well, don't guilt trip me, sweetheart," he choked out, and that's when I knew I won.

We wandered down to his somewhat clean kitchen and finished the strudels. Judging by how quickly he devoured the pastry, he rather really enjoyed apples or hadn't eaten actual food since my last delivery a day and a half ago. I suspected a mixture of both.

"Aren't you supposed to be in school?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. I threw the plastic pastry bag in the overfilling trash can.

Well, don't remind me now. "Do you really expect me to go back to school? It's enough socialization just hanging out at my house, where my _four_ siblings can be seen making some kind of annoying noise at all hours. Posy's in the middle of her terrible twos. Nothing but tantrums every afternoon."

He started eyeing his cupboards where he stashed his white liquor when I realized I was basically flaunting my home life to his face. "If you've come here to ask me about the nightmares, let me just tell you: no, they never go away. Learn to live with yourself in the least destructive way possible."

And then he reached into the cupboards and pulled out a bottle of liquor and an empty glass.

"I've got my whittling. I've got my siblings. I've got my mom," I protested. "I'm not self destructive."

He poured himself a glass. "What's your problem, then?"

I bit my lip. "Every time I look at my siblings, I see the faces and voices of the kids I killed in the arena. I'm responsible for taking the life of children. The boy from eight was fucking _fifteen_ years old and I sent thousands of volts of electricity through her brains. The girl from two was eighteen, barely an adult, and I made her stroll right outside into a _sandstorm_ where she was _burned alive_. Nobody dares enter my room anymore, because the last time Vick threw a pillow on my face as a prank to wake me up, and I just kept thinking about choking on burning sand and if you hadn't given me medicine, those bird mutations would have eaten my warm body and left me buried under piles of desert sands. I almost attacked him. My brother. My little baby brother. I need someone to commiserate with, Haymitch."

He raised his glass. "To the victor, the spoils."

"Talk to me, Haymitch," I nearly begged. I felt like crying.

He slammed his glass down, making me jump. "I... No. I can't," he refused, already pouring another drink. "You're just a kid. Thirteen years old. If I unwind everything to discuss things like friendship, I'd be responsible for you. I can't do that to you."

I wasn't thirteen. I was thirty-three. But he didn't know. Would never know that. "You became responsible for me ever since my name got pulled out of that box," I accused. "I can't talk to my family about the arena. Never can, never will. So how will I be able to cope when Snow eventually sells me out to the highest paying customers? You're the only one who understands."

He leaned his head back. "My only advice?" He finally responded. "Don't tell Snow no. He'll kill your family, your loved ones, as revenge. You've got three years of innocence left. Treasure every minute."

"Is this a problem with my age? Am I too young to kindle a friendship with you?" I demanded, wiping tears from my eyes fiercely. "If that's so, you're fucking stupid. I stopped being a kid when the Capitol tossed me into the games. So help me plan how to survive my oncoming victory tour!"

"I don't want to ruin you!" He barked, clutching his glass. "I can't just hang around you because I don't want you following my footsteps. A drunk. A failure. Alone, surrounded in _pity_ and _misery_."

"Well, maybe I don't care," I said. "Maybe all I need right now isn't the righteous path, but a way to remember that I'm not alone. That I've got someone who understands, even if he's never sober and who'll no doubt be higher than a horse by the end of today!"

And I ran out the door, so full of intense loathing at no one in particular. Oh, wait. The Capitol. I hated the government. I hated President Snow. I hated everything about the leader of Panem I wanted to stab him with a rusty knife so he'd feel every bit of the pain till his death. I raced all the way to my studio, ignoring mom's curious glances from downstairs. And then vented out every last bit of frustration using a chisel and knife.

* * *

As the baker's son, Peeta had a bunch of people whisper nasty things about him. That he gorged himself on expensive foods every night due to his privileged birth. That he never had to lift a finger for work, unlike all the kids who lived in the Seam, selling themselves for every trade possible. That he was an over-educated kid who lived in the merchants section of town and never knew the horrors of the world.

All of it was untrue. Except for maybe the horrors of the world part, but he didn't know anything singularly terrifying enough to be counted as that fear mongering.

Before school and on the weekends, he slaved over a kitchen counter top, making his arms sore with the effort of kneading dough and developing callouses on his fingers from grasping whisks too tightly. He'd never starved or gone hungry, but there were many nights where the food on his plate looked only slightly more appetizing than what they fed the pigs. The grains available to the general population of district twelve resembled mushy oatmeal more than actual bread. He slept in the floor above the bakery itself, where he shared a room with his two older brothers. They slept on a bunk bed and he, a pull-out mattress couch. However, his distinct blonde hair and blue eyes saved him a spot at the lunch tables outside with the other kids from the merchants section. But appearing so obviously above the Seam kids wasn't what he wanted in life - especially with a special someone in his heart.

But his normal day to day routine was interrupted when a Seam girl walked into his family's bakery one day during his weekend shifts. She wore a rumpled white blouse halfheartedly tucked into a green plaid skirt and leggings - a mostly normal outfit, if the material seemed more on the rich side than normal for someone from the Seam - but what really sparked his attention were the red and blue paint splatters all over her front and rolled up sleeves. Naturally, he gravitated the topic to his own interest in painting, but then he was offered to help the mildly familiar girl paint things to sell. Selling items meant profits. That meant money.

As the third and youngest son of the family, he wasn't at all expected to inherit the bakery. Rye, the oldest, was the heir. Banner existed in case Rye somehow couldn't inherit. Him, the third son. The heir, the spare, and the third son. Naturally, the prospects of finding his own original job was appealing, but he didn't know if he could trust a Seam girl to rise up into merchant status. She looked about his age, too.

So when every single student hushed into quiet out on the recess field the next day, he looked around for the cause of it all. Behind him, the girl from the day before.

"Oh, hey," he greeted, easily falling into conversation. "I don't think I've seen you in class. Are you in one of the older kids' classes?"

The slightest of smirks quirked onto her lips as she shook her head and told him she didn't go to school anymore. He briefly wondered if her dropping out at such a young age had to do with this art of hers.

"Have you got paint at home?" He tried instead, getting a bit weirded out at the recess field's stillness. Everyone stared at his exchange with the mysterious girl who stopped attending school at however old she was. Twelve? Thirteen?

"Lots and lots," she assured. "And a variety of brushes. When are you free today? I'll walk you to my house."

He found himself in mild disbelief at a girl with such obvious Seam features - grey eyes, tanned olive skin, black hair - being able to afford different paints and paintbrushes. Perhaps they were all homemade. He didn't want to play around with what he imagined as dipping twigs in wild strawberry mush, but for some forsaken reason, he agreed with the strange girl to help her out. "My curfew is until dark. I'll meet you outside the front entrance when classes end?"

She accepted, then sauntered off the school grounds. He blinked, as if reorienting himself to reality. People began talking and playing again. Everything went back to normal.

But when he tried talking to his friends, they shut him down with nervous giggling and careful scooting away. Finally, at the end of recess, he asked Banner, who was older than him by three years, what the commotion on the recess field was about. Or, the lack of commotion.

Banner laughed at him for not having figured it out and then went back to his smirking friends. Peeta wasn't sure how to feel about how everybody at school treated him, so he ignored that line of thought and instead sketched out basic designs for cakes his father wanted him to decorate next week. Oh, how he yearned for actual canvas and a medium other than frosting pipe bags. He drew chalk designs on the sidewalks and filled up scratch paper with sketches, but he doubted the cheap replacement could measure up to holding an actual paintbrush and specially tailored paper. Did that girl need a painter for portraits? Or sculptures? Or pottery? He hadn't thought to ask, too caught up in the moment. He hadn't even asked her name, he realized. His mother would kick him if she knew how bad his manners had been then.

Still, his confusion plagued him for the rest of the day.

Finally, finally, when the clock ticked three, he bounded out the classroom door to wait outside for the girl. He was the first outside, having ran with a fervor.

"You're a bit early. Don't you guys play on the recess field a bit before actually leaving school?" A familiar voice drawled out from behind.

He jumped and whirled around. The girl, still wearing a paint splattered blouse and green skirt, folded her arms, unimpressed. She smiled at his stuttering for an explanation - the first smile he'd seen out of the girl - and gestured for them to start walking. By the time they passed by his family's bakery did he realize something was wrong.

"Hey, aren't we heading in the wrong direction?" He asked.

The still unnamed girl hummed. "I'd hope not."

That wasn't a clear answer. He began to wonder that perhaps this girl wasn't from the Seam, but actually apart of the merchants section. Maybe her mom or dad or something married into higher class status from the Seam, leaving their children with the differing features. But then they turned left from the Justice square and headed farther north than even the Mayor's home, where his classmate Madge Undersee lived. Not many people lived in the far northern part of town. In fact, only victors in Victor's Village lived this far up...

"Wait, you're Blaire Hawthorne?" He blurted out. His voice echoed far louder than he wanted it to and he clamped his hands over his mouth in embarrassment.

To add insult to injury, the girl - no, _Blaire_, the freakin' victor of the sixty ninth Hunger Games - startled from his outburst. "Wait, you didn't know? Then who'd you think I'd be able to sell my stuff to?"

They paused right at the entrance of Victor's Village, where Peeta could see a dozen mansions circling around an abandoned fountain centerpiece. "I - I - I don't know!" He yelped. "I just... nevermind. Sorry."

She lifted an eyebrow, shrugged, then continued on, seemingly unbothered by the entire ordeal. He scampered in her footsteps, trying to wonder what dimension he'd woken up to that made a literal victor of the games even reach out to him, never mind the fact that she wanted him to paint for her. There had to be a catch. Maybe Blaire ate mud and ordered around elderly grandparents to do her chores. Maybe she hated kittens and used paper bills as fire starters. Maybe she was an awful person, just to balance out everything impossible about his current situation.

But no. He entered a house he could only dream of spending the night in, with furniture he was too afraid of touching in the fear that he'd break it somehow and then have to pay for the damages. She offered snacks with impressive politeness (and how could he refuse, eating rich people food?), then glided up the multiple stories to her private studio. Except that the studio could fit three of his parents' bedrooms inside and still have room, so he gaped wordlessly at the entrance. He dawdled like an idiot for a good minute before joining her at a small table in the center of the room crammed with all sorts of wooden carvings and paint buckets.

"So, Peeta," she began. He didn't remember giving her his name. "I need you to paint this toadstool village I've been working on for the past week. We can be branded partners, each getting a fifty percent cut. Whaddya say?"

Fifty percent? Fifty? Five-zero? He wanted to say that that was a ridiculous price for just providing the colors and tonal shading, but stopped himself before saying anything stupid. "It's a deal," he finalized. They shook on it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Dreamers Live to Die**

**I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]**

**Published 2020.02.09**

* * *

Peeta became something of a common presence around the house in the following weeks. Mom was ecstatic at the prospect of me finally normalizing and adjusting by gaining a new sorta-friend and pretty much adopted him under our roof. Once she found out he was the baker's son, they gossiped about baking and their favorite types of pastries to make. Rory teased us about being girlfriend and boyfriend, at which Vick attacked him with a throw pillow. I had to agree with Vick. I didn't think I could even crush on someone so obviously younger. Maybe he was only a year and a half younger physically, but I was twenty years older mentally. Zero plans for any pedophilic thoughts.

Gale's reaction fell somewhere between angry and agitated. He didn't like Peeta for whatever reason, maybe because he knew Peeta had a huge crush on Katniss or whatever inane reason boys held. Me? I truly liked that boy, but my worrying over whether or not I was indirectly changing the future kept me from fully extending the invite from casual business partners to full blown friends.

We finished the entire toadstool village by the middle of September, balancing his own school and bakery shifts while I worked on my own extracurriculars. Such as, deciding we needed an electric kiln in our basement. I paid a few burly townspeople to move the clunky thing to our house all while struggling to carry baskets of fresh clay and glazes. Mom managed my victor finances and initially disapproved of buying an entire kiln without telling anybody (it was a split second decision, really), but said it didn't matter in the end because we had more money than we could do about anyway. I could revamp the entire district twelve into a utopian dreamland, but I felt as though President Snow would not approve of that action plan. And then kill someone to make a point.

Finishing the toadstool led Peeta and I wondering how on earth we were going to sell it in the first place. District twelve had no one rich enough to want to buy something so obviously useless in the long term, but the Capitol did.

"You can phone someone in the Capitol? And then set up an auction?" Peeta offered, staring at the home telephone attached to the living room wall. It was off-white, blocky, and strangely reminiscent of a receiver from the late nineties, considering all the latest technology the rest of Panem (read: the Capitol) used. Well. Communications were limited and all that.

The best course of action would be to ask Haymitch about it, but I hadn't made direct contact with the drunk since our tumultuous meeting in August. And because I was a coward, didn't want to resort to asking him.

"We've probably got a phone directory somewhere in the supply room," I shrugged. We made our way to the supply room, also known as the room where random objects we didn't know how to use but looked important enough to not throw away were stashed. A fair amount of boxes scattered around the dusty room. It took over an hour of rifling through mildly useless objects, papers, and manuals to find the phone directory. Peeta had to be a hundred percent done by now, but when I looked over at him, he looked more excited than ever.

What a strange boy. "What's making you so fluttery?" I asked, genuinely curious.

He brightened considerably. "Oh, nothing. It's just that it feels so much more official now that the magical mushroom village is complete and we're ready to sell. How much do you think we should sell it for? A hundred? Two hundred?"

I lifted an eyebrow. "I was thinking more on the realms of a hundred thousand to five hundred thousand."

His jaw dropped comically.

"Come on, this is the Capitol we're talking about," I defended, feeling flustered for some odd reason. "The people over there are stupidly rich and would probably be insulted that a victor is selling something at such a low price."

He stuttered something incomprehensible, eyes still buggered wide open.

I couldn't help but crack a grin at his flabbergasted expression. "Oh, come on, you. Let's go downstairs for a snack. I'm hungry."

* * *

Peeta had never known someone to be quite as strange as Blaire Hawthorne. She stomped around victoriously in the cramped indoor space of her studio to celebrate a hard day's work, but glided over the outside gravel paths without so much as a whisper from her clunky leather boots. She was funny, but never understood jokes. She could smile sweeter than honey but preferred ugly crooked grins showing off an unusually sharp canine tooth. Her hands spun creations out of chunks of wood with all the delicacy and care in the world, but the middle and ring fingers of her skilled hands were crooked inwards, creating odd handprints in the dust. She was the most intelligent person he had ever met, but could never quite articulate her thoughts without stammering or waving around her hands in an incredibly child-like fashion.

Her entire being was a contradiction, seemingly made to confuse Peeta by the day. Most of the time, it didn't even pass his mind that his tentative friend slash business partner won the latest Hunger Games. She didn't look like a victor; like a killer. She wore dresses and skirts and blouses, though most of the time they were plain white button down shirts and plaid skirts - not the exceedingly rich, jewel patterned dresses he saw victors wear on the television. Or did victors also wear normal clothes when not on camera? The thought of them being human just like him made his head hurt, as he had always found those who had taken human lives for the amusement of the Capitol to be less than human. A puppet.

But then some weird girl invited him over for a job. Then dinner. Then a different job. And then he came by her fancy mansion at least once a week, rather to paint some wooden creation of hers or to use her studio for his own purposes. She said she didn't care if he wanted to use her expensive paints, paintbrushes, and canvases. And so, without too much guilt, he did just that. And through her, he stopped viewing victors as just instruments of the Capitol's vicious appetite, but also victims of suffering. Sometimes, when she thought he wasn't looking, her fingers would tremble at too loud noises or whenever his paintings featured skies that were not so sunny. He stopped painting dark images, and soon drew idyllic scene after scene.

His family had mixed reactions to his bizarre new friendship slash partnership. Rye couldn't care less and Banner teased him about hanging out with an older girl. His father didn't approve of their friendship due to Peeta developing "useless skills," but didn't stop him from heading over to the Hawthorne house whenever the days grew long and sales dropped during the seasonal recessions. His mother, however, had the strangest reaction. She encouraged him to hang out with her as much as possible, stating something about young love and it was never too young to marry.

Which wasn't the reaction he'd hoped to get. He liked the girl alright, but didn't love her. He harbored a massive crush on the solemn Everdeen girl in his year, not the third victor for district twelve. Blaire was too creepy at times and too wise everywhere else for him to ever think of her as more than a friend. And then his mom went off about marrying the right kind of girl, like a pretty blonde merchant girl or "_that rich girl in Victor's Village. She's about your age, right, sweetie?_" It was weird to think about his friend that way, but he did try to think about it from his mom's point of view. Sometimes his mom sighed about wanting more in life than being a baker's wife, so she pushed her personal views onto her children. Especially him, as he was the baby of the family, thus the main part of her attention, even though he reached double digits over a year ago.

Sometimes he just came over to their house (front door never locked, so he could just enter without knocking) to sit next to Blaire who had been in her studio since the crack of dawn, and sit in amiable silence while they each did their own thing. She'd hum a foreign tune and let fine strips of wood patter onto the floor with the melodic thunks of her whittling knife, while he let paint glide through creamy white canvas boards and scratch at the dried stains on the rickety tabletop. The rhythm of their partnership allowed for his skills to develop, translating into extraordinarily intricate designs on frosted cakes and iced sweet pastries.

He liked the Hawthorne family alright, too, from what he saw of them. Hazelle Hawthorne, the mother of the lot, asked him too many questions about baking he thought to be common knowledge. He enjoyed teaching the older woman his best tricks, loving the surprised look on her face when her pumpkin bread came out better than ever and she let him actually eat the expensive treats they baked together. Back home, if he so much as handled the apple tarts wrong, he'd get a whooping. Peeta found Gale, Blaire's twin brother, to be quite intimidating with his thick eyebrows and constantly pissed off expression (Blaire called him a giant puppy, which Peeta fervently disagreed to that statement). He recognized her twin as that school hunk a bunch of the girls fawned over, and only hoped that Katniss didn't feel the same way. Next, the twins Rory and Vick. He didn't see them as much because they usually played outside in the muddy meadows. And then baby Posy, who kept on trying to bite his fingers.

His school friends appeared to forget about the odd incident on the recess field, and treated him normally after that. He supposed it helped that Blaire didn't attend school anymore, else recess might become an awkward decision between sitting next to her to discuss their next project, or to play with his friends on the playground.

As the weeks passed by, the studio overfilled with their collection of art. He couldn't bring his paintings home due to the lack of room, so they made do by covering every inch of the studio walls (a former guest bedroom, complete with its own private bathroom) with his sketches, designs, and finished projects. And then all the floor and ceiling space dedicated itself to Blaire's carvings. Several half-finished life sized sculptures of people and animals he didn't recognize rested in a corner, while a bunch of different tables of desks of varying heights and types of chairs cluttered all over the room, each one holding at least a dozen little figurines and framed carvings. Their prized magical mushroom village (what was a toadstool?) hung from the ceiling from bronze wires, each piece swaying in the slight breeze from the opened windows. The bathroom was carefully devoid of art, being more of a hand-washing station than anything.

What bothered Peeta the most about his sorta-friend was her treatment of him. She paid great attention to his needs and wants, such as providing him a space for art and the ability to buy any treat he craved, but friendship extended beyond just material gifts. She listened to him ramble on about school, quirking her lips into that infuriating crooked grin of hers, as if she was only humoring their conversations. If he didn't know better, he would say the girl acted like she was better than him, or that she was older and wiser. Even though they were literally only a year and a half apart in age. It infuriated him that he could barely read Blaire behind her cold grey eyes and constantly amused lips. She couldn't be described as constantly smiling, no, but her lips resembled something more of a haughty smirk throughout the day.

With Gale's fierce gaze and Blaire's nerve wracking smirk, the older Hawthorne twins were a force to be reckoned with.

Peeta could only hope he would never accidentally set himself in their line of fire.

The days where Mrs. Hawthorne urged the two of them to air out the studio were usually baking days. He and Mrs. Hawthorne would mix the ingredients together and knead the dough, and Blaire would form it into wonderful little shapes. He enjoyed these days just as much as their painting days, since being able to bake without his own mother craning her neck over him while barking orders of a time limit allowed him to enjoy the activity much more. He made fondant icing from scratch and let Blaire's skilled hands take a crack at the new medium of art, so different from wood or even clay (he knew the house had a kiln somewhere), but the delicate decorations turned out perfectly, better than whatever the Mellark bakery could churn out.

But even as he spent more and more time with the girl, she still remained quite the mystery to puzzle over.

* * *

In the end, the phone directory only held useless call center numbers and mayor office directions, so we could only sell our art once I made my rounds during the Victory Tour.

Which I was not looking forward to. At all.

Weeks flew into months and the summer season transformed into autumn's crisp red leaves and frost laden grasses. The autumn season disappeared all too quickly, drawing back for the onslaught of winter. Throughout the rest of the year, I made more wood sculptures, paid Peeta out of pocket to paint Posy's animal dolls whenever he visited once or twice a week, and completely immersed myself in art. I picked up pottery alongside Vick, who had a real knack for using the wheel. Again, Peeta glazed and painted the clay sculptures, as I had absolutely no talent in any kind of painting or filling in colors. I barely trusted Vick to hold a paintbrush without permanently staining his fingertips or something equally insane, so Peeta became the answer to our problems.

Gale retreated into his hunting, spending most of his waking hours with Katniss outside of school. Sometimes he invited the girl over for dinner Sunday nights, at which I really hoped that he wasn't actively wooing her at our age. Then again, Peeta came over more often than the girl on fire, so it wasn't like I could complain about the situation. They were honestly a great pair of friends, but Gale's one sided crush hurt me in more ways I thought possible. Maybe because I spent the same amount of time raising him alongside mom, so I found him to be like my own child, or baby sibling.

My age haunted me more often than not. There were good looking adults in town I wanted to just flirt with in a mature adult fashion, but I couldn't force any of them into feeling uncomfortable about my child status. My period started and an influx of pubescent hormones developed at the beginning of winter, and all those feelings about the beautiful adults became harder to suppress. People who I wanted to befriend didn't even know how to talk to me, or avoided me altogether because they saw how I killed real, living people just like them on television.

By the time my Victory Tour rolled in, I was utterly defeated by the influx of heavy emotions. When I saw Haymitch for the first time in months, paunchier than usual, on the train, there wasn't even a shred of protest when Effie sat us down to prepare for my speeches. My arms and legs felt all nice and shiny from my prep team's earlier harassment, so I distracted myself from Effie's shrill voice and Haymitch's drunken slurs by rubbing my limbs against the soft fabric of my coat. Was it mink? Or rabbit?

"I've even prepared note cards for you if you ever need to refocus on the speech," the Capitol woman chirped. I blinked, reorienting myself to reality.

Haymitch dozed off next to me. "Thank you," I said just to ease the conversation somewhere less confusing, accepting the crisp floral patterned notes. "I appreciate them very much."

She beamed with the radiation of a thousand suns.

I went through the speeches with Effie, practicing my most charming smile and tone of speech, as everything would be broadcasted back to the Capitol. I wanted - no, _needed_ \- to make a good impression. For Snow to take one good look at my unassuming, mostly popular self, and discard me from his mind. He couldn't trace me back to knowing anything about a worrying rebellion (a future rebellion, at least), couldn't suspect me of being anything other than the perfect victor. While I couldn't see myself scheming any blueprints for a rebellion related escape pod, it simply would not do if the Capitol sent troops to murder my entire family if I said one wrong thing about my future knowledge.

Several hours passed by. Effie declared the speech memorized and my facial expressions perfect, so I sauntered back to my private quarters for a nap. But I couldn't sleep. I just tossed and turned and my eyes itched with pent-up energy every time I tried to smash the eyelids closed. Eventually, my prep team dragged me out of my quiet, sleepless state, into a different room to prepare for the cameras.

Flavius massaged a cinnamon scented goo into my hair, Octavia lathered my skin with ice cold gels, and Venia redid my nails, citing how horrible my nail-chewing habit was if the touch ups from this morning had already gone to ruin.

District eleven I knew to be geographically a conglomeration of half of the previous United States' southern region, from Georgia to South Carolina, spanning from the coast to the Mississippi River. Of course, they didn't call the river anything, now in Panem. Or provide adequate geography lessons at all, in fear of the districts planning insidious uprisings in certain locations. All provided in schools were the most basic maps of vague district borders and an approximate size of each one. District eleven had to be one of the, if not most, largest districts of the country. Due to agricultural based jobs abundant and necessary for every one of their citizens, the tributes typically had a fairer chance at winning the games compared to the other districts. Not counting the well fed Careers, of course. The tributes in the past from eleven wore strong and lean muscle from hours in fields, and were seemingly impervious to all types of weather after staying outside for the harvest and planting seasons. They grew taller than the people in the north, allowing for an added height advantage, also.

Through the train windows, I saw people laboring over acres of wheat, and I wondered which of those fields shipped directly to the Mellark bakery.

Haymitch hobbled outside the train first, right into the broad embrace of a tall black man missing his left arm from the elbow down.

"Haymitch! Oh, so good to see you, my drunken friend!" The man bellowed, chuckling all the while.

A few other people I vaguely recognized dawdled in the back of the train station, which was lined with rigid Peacekeepers. Back in district twelve, most of the Peacekeepers stopped caring about misdemeanors and odd behavior, yet the ones here began looking increasingly twitchy at the two men's warm greeting.

"Time's ticking away, Blaire," Effie reminded, pulling my arm away, out the train. Her prompting created a chain reaction, setting the rows of Peacekeepers to push us and the small crowd into the streets to start walking to their Justice Building.

After a round of hugging Haymitch half to death, the curious man in question sauntered over to me. "Oh, and you must be lightning girl! Blaire Hawthorne, nice to meet you. I am Chaff, an old friend of your mentor."

And then he kissed both my cheeks before going back to harassing Haymitch. His actions were startling, and it took all my power to not trip in surprise.

"Does he always do that?" I squeaked out to Effie, rubbing away the wet smooches on my cheeks. No, I wasn't a prude, but I hated the idea of being grabbed and gushed over without my prior consent. I was an adult, goddammit! Not a child! And definitely not a doll!

She looked over from preening her hair. "Do what?"

And then the main square came into view.

The Justice Building, while larger than our own, was a great deal more sun damaged and haggard. Fine cracks chipped away at a once lustrous paint job, and several terracotta roof tiles were missing from their bunch. Thick vines of English Ivy wrapped around the front stone columns, acting more protective of the building than the worn bricks did. I deduced the small crowd including Chaff walking off to the sides of the main platform to be previous victors. If my memory served correctly, these were all the district's victors. I discreetly wondered if I'd have to meet all the previous victors from years before on this trip while gloating to the families how I survived the arena and their child didn't.

My speech started and ended gloriously - another word for disrespectful. Perhaps the group of people gathered in the square would never grow to like me, or even understand the things I did in the arena, but I hadn't touched a hair on one of their own children's heads, so we wrapped up without glares or discontent faces. No claps, of course, because the overworked and famished people didn't dare applaud for a Capitol victory like the games, so Effie peacefully gathered me away, back into the building.

As the sun began to trickle away, a three course meal was served at a long mahogany table in the main dining hall. I sat next to the mayor, uncomfortably sandwiched between the feeble old man and a drunken Haymitch laughing alongside Chaff about something I didn't care to listen to. But then I heard my name in their conversation and my ears honed in on every word.

"She is no longer a child," Chaff mentioned, using low tones. A middle aged woman sitting across from me looked up at the same time. Seeder, I guessed her to be. She looked vaguely familiar - probably had her games repeated on loop due to popularity or something.

Seeder stretched her chapped lips into a smile that was not unkind. "And she is also sitting right next to you. Where are your manners, boy?"

'Boy?' I refrained from rudely examining her tight, flawless bronze colored skin. How old was this woman, to call the forty one year old Chaff 'boy?'

Said man shifted his sitting position to offer me an apologetic shoulder hug. "Forgive me, Miss Hawthorne."

"Thank you," I accepted. "Please feel free to just call me Blaire. There are too many members of my family to be simply referred to by my last name."

He chuckled deeply, his previous conversation with Haymitch now coming back to light. "Your mentor and I were just discussing - are _still_ discussing - his treatment of you."

I gulped.

"While you have the body of a child, great intelligence sparks behind your eyes," he murmured gravely, as if in warning. "You deserve the respect of an adult, regardless of the fact you should have been treated like one ever since your name was pulled on the reaping day. Haymitch needs to realize this and stop treating you like a child, when it is so very obvious you are no longer one - or, have never been one. How have you come to be so wise and intelligent, Blaire?"

Haymitch sneered back, breaking Chaff's disturbing amount of eye contact and dangerous words. "It doesn't matter how mature she is, Chaff. She's still a _child_. I'm not demeaning her. _I'm trying to protect her_."

He hissed out that last sentence as if his tongue was on fire.

"And I think you boys ought to shut up and hear what Blaire thinks about this mess," Seeder cut through the vibrating tension with her smarmy words. But it was hardly a time to celebrate in gratitude, for she had put me in the spotlight.

The mayor was too enthralled in conversation with a pretty server lady behind him. The other district eleven people of importance were too busy with their meal to notice our little group's drama. A clear coast. "I want to be able to talk to you like an adult," I told Haymitch honestly. His pale eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "But I really am still a child and still have much learning and growing up to do before I properly earn the respect of an adult."

"Spoken eloquently," Chaff nodded. Seeder narrowed her eyes at her fellow district mate to get him to discontinue the conversation. Quickly, he turned to pour more drinks for everybody. I shot the old lady a grateful look, but she didn't notice, now deeply enthralled in a conversation with the person to her right.

The rest of dinner felt painfully lonely.

As soon as the last of the dessert dishes were cleared, Peacekeepers escorted us straight back to our train, where the day's events tired me out so much I fell straight asleep as soon as my face hit the pillows.

I dreamed of an empty meadow, just like the one behind the school's recess field. The skies above the meadow started peacefully idyllic, with streaking baby blue and creamy white clouds floating above. But then the stripes of clouds thickened in size, straight into a huge grey cover, blanketing the now grass-less meadow. The dirt transformed into grains of sand and my feet melted straight into the earth. The ground kept swallowing me whole until the very top of my head submerged into the dry, rough material. Before my surroundings could suffocate me, I shot straight back up to the meadow, back to air. But the air was thick and hot with heat. The skies, once a crystalline blue, now contained rumbling pitch black clouds. Thunder came, and barely a second later, lightning struck the ground half a mile away. The temporary light illuminated the fresh corpse of the boy from eight, who now wandered through the darkness, eyes glazed over in his death trance.

"You don't even remember my name," he accused, and then the lightning strike receded and all was dark again. During the next strike, he appeared closer, murmuring something ghastly. On the fifth strike, the lightning bolted straight down on him, and then the boy from eight turned into Amaria from two, and then the tall boy from seven who hunted with the Careers. The lightning faded, and I realized that it was going to strike me next. The sand grabbed my feet to prevent me from running, and I could only stare up at the blinding beam of light riveting down in a matter of milliseconds.

I woke up in a cold sweat. Sunlight beamed from the open shutter blinds, and I moved frantically to close them, fingers trembling with the exertion of my nightmare.

The next district on the tour, district ten, was a less sordid affair than district eleven. Haymitch didn't know any of the victors personally and I hadn't faced anyone from ten in the arena, so I was able to distance myself from the entire speech and dinner.

As the livestock district, the dinner mostly comprised of their specialty beefs and poultry meats. We sat in affable silence, not willing to discuss the previous day's events. Neither of us were great speakers, or were brave enough to break the tension first, so the entire meal felt out of place.

If we weren't provided with the cold, hard statistics based from textbooks, I would have found district ten to be the poorest. Everybody's skin was tanned and leathery from staying out in the harsh sun all year round, taking care of smelly animals and hazardous zoonosis diseases. Too many children in the crowd wore an unhealthy pallor and wore clothes so ragged, I could imagine the Seam people's daily attire to be considered luxury items for these people. How unfortunate to live in a dry, flat, and hot environment. Not many things grew in this area, so people relied on the meat from their own farms to sustain their families.

Even before I won the games, our large family ate quite healthily. Gale had always brought home fresh game, wild plants, and herbs, while our tesserae input provided a somewhat steady influx of grains. Now, as a wealthy member of society, I could only think about how most of the people in the livestock district never even had the chance to fully clean their hands from the stench of animal fertilizer.

District nine was slightly better, monetarily. The waves of amber extended as far as the eye could see, and it took several hours to reach the main town of the grain industry district.

Most of the victors extended past fifty years old, but a tall, strong female caught my eye as the odd one out. Triti Lancaster was a beautiful dark skinned woman who wore her hair in a white scarf. She had been the winner of sixty-first games, and her body was still young enough to resemble her victorious teenage self, now grown up as a twenty five year old woman. I briefly wondered how someone so slim and wafting could win a game, but her intense chocolate eyes reminded me that sponsors could have bet on her victory, in hopes of kissing her plump dark lips and violating every part of her body.

My mood soured enough to avoid striking up a potential friendship with the woman at the reminder of my future. Triti undoubtedly had been extended the choice of prostitution or the death of her loved ones, and I didn't want to know enough about her to find out which choice she made.

For I dreaded my choice in the future. Of course, I would do anything to save my family, but I didn't know if my sanity would be patched up enough by the time my sixteenth birthday rolled around for it to be prepared for the forced prostitution.

The textiles district, district eight, I remembered to be the first to rebel and spark the war against the Capitol. But all thoughts of their insane bravery washed away when the train doors opened and thick smog of factory smoke hit my nose. Smoke, ash, and dust seeped into the corners of the urban district. Not a blade of grass in sight - something I hated. Everything about eight was so unfamiliar and foreign, from the tall, looming stone factories to the absence of nature, that I immediately wanted to curl up back in my private quarters and whittle away at a comforting pace.

I felt sick from eating decadent dinners several nights in a row, so I barely picked at my food, not bothering eating the properly polite amount. An industry of textiles didn't seem to be one where its skills could be applied to the games, but a surprising number of victors remained, being about the same amount of the previous districts combined. Here, Haymitch had friends.

An old, gnarly man nicknamed Woof shared way too many drinks with my mentor throughout the long dinner. And he spared an occasional few sentences with a young woman named Cecelia, whose belly swelled with a child.

"How many months along are you?" I asked the woman sitting directly in front of me. Her skin was so pale it almost appeared translucent, contrasting heavily with her dark brown eyes and hair.

She offered a small smile. "Seven months. And if you're interested in knowing, it's a boy."

"Is this your first child?" I ventured, feeling as though talking about something she loved was a safer topic than bitching about the machine polluting weather or to ask how she won the fifty-ninth games.

"My second," she gushed immediately, and I dreaded the upcoming socialization. She talked about her first child, a four year old girl, and soon I learned more about a random toddler named Belle's first words than I knew about Posy's _("Belle's first words were 'thank you.' Can you believe that? My little girl was born to be polite and well mannered!")._ Posy's first words were probably something normal when she hit one years old. Probably. I wracked my brain thinking about my sister's pudgy baby phase.

Effie dragged me away to the train in her clawed iron grip, telling me all about her delightful conversation with the mayor. When I mentioned talking with Cecelia, she grew absolutely ecstatic and squealed about how that woman had to be her absolute favorite victor in the games so far (besides me, of course), and how she really grew to be Panem's number one celebrity during her time. Effie continued on about mothers and pregnancy magazine pictorials before losing me completely to a little safe haven in the back of my mind.

I whittled away miniature crafts and reformed and edited my given speeches tailored to each district in between waiting between districts. District seven, known for their production of lumber, contained a similar enough geography of its Cascade Mountains to Appalachia that I was almost wanting to tour around the area longer than the drive and walk from the train station to the Justice Building. There was no Johanna Mason yet, nobody I really knew well enough (even if it was through a book and not in person) to strike up conversation. District six passed by without anything notable, other than the insufferably cold winds blowing through the entire outdoor speech.

Haymitch seemed to get along with district five's victors well enough, as they were all alcoholics. Plenty of drinks and jeers and laughs were spent that night, all while I picked at my food and the town's mayor asked uncomfortably personal questions about my current emotional state.

The trip to district four dragged on for what seemed like eternity. Perhaps due to the knowledge of seeing two important people - Finnick Odair and Mags Flanagan - at the dinner banquet, my nerves shook crazily in my stomach. My prep team's constant appliance of cinnamon and pumpkin scents felt out of place in a seaside town, when we finally arrived, but it provided memories of comfort and warmth of a loving kitchen back home in twelve.

District four became the first district so far to actually applaud and cheer at the end of the speech, signalling at long last what I didn't quite know how to behave around - Careers. Only about half of the tributes from four ended out Careers, but the shark hunting mentality of the crowd made me want to cry out in frustration.

I was arranged by the mayor's side, as usual, but instead of Haymitch at my side, it was the old woman Mags from the eleventh Hunger Games. She greeted me warmly with a kiss on the cheek and a warble of words I couldn't understand. Perhaps this woman suffered a stroke in the past, resulting in slurred or sloppy speech. But no - her words weren't at all sloppy, or from the result of brain damage. She spoke quickly and straight forward, a strong expression written on her face. I wanted to like this old woman, this person who gave her life for the rebellion, but all I could think about was how she was fated to die. From exposure to painful, nerve-attacking chemical fog. To save Peeta, a boy who I knew better than most.

Instead of feeling thankful for her future sacrifice, my heart pounded in trepidation. At the thought of her death. Of her sure death. Of her cannon shooting out in the distance. Of her going back inside the arena.

A gummy mouthed white haired old lady who had been born before the games first introduced themselves to Panem, off to die in another arena less than six years from now.

"Hey there. Blaire, right?" Purred a deep timbre from a handsome bronze haired, golden tan skinned, sea green eyed young man before me. Finnick Odair. Nobody else could wear such scandalous clothes to a formal event without causing a disruption.

"No, it's Haymitch," I deadpanned, unsure what else to say to the beauty of a man. "Blaire's over there, drinking her life away."

He paused for a split second, slightly thrown at my attempts at an ice breaker humor, but then he smoothly transitioned into a new topic. "So, Blaire," he spoke with rich tones. "How's the victor life treating you?"

I wondered if he was asking about my well-being in contrived, seductive tones he was popular for, but dismissed it as just my imagination. Snow couldn't touch me yet. Finnick had no reason to know if I was aware of the prostitution schemes.

"I'm just trying to enjoy the rest of my childhood," I responded, tugging my lips into a half-hearted grin. While there weren't any cameras for the dinner, it didn't strike me as normal to be in the Finnick Odair's presence and not smile. For the sake of people watching us, if there were any.

He nodded gently. "Three years left?"

Most people would've said five, counting all the way to eighteen. But he counted to the age of consent and drinking, displaying the truth behind his words. Three years until the peace shatters. Three years until I don't just stop in the Capitol to mentor, but also to uphold a string of "lovers." He mentioned how I beat his record for being the youngest victor, at which I changed the subject to Mags.

Said woman looked up from her shellfish and nattered on about something I was beginning to decipher as extremely trashy curses towards some very specific people.

"Oh, I agree wholeheartedly," I said, just to keep the mood up while the rest of the table began a discussion about their favorite, most brutal games in Panem's short history.

Mags cackled and pointed a wrinkly finger at a basket of bread before me I hadn't had the appetite to reach out for. Now curious, I shifted its contents my way, and saw several piles of salty seaweed bread.

"Do you want me to eat one?" I asked patiently, not sure at what she was getting at.

Finnick responded for her. "She's not pointing at the bread, but my hands."

I looked up to see the handsome twenty year old extending a handful of sugar cubes. "Here, take one. Everyone needs a little sweetness in life, especially for a cute girl like you."

His flirting may have flustered me if I had actually been a thirteen year old, but I simply laughed and told him, "Save the flirting for later. Maybe in a couple of years or so."

"She's a child, yet," Haymitch slurred from his corner, two seats down. His interruption into our conversation was surprising, but the intoxicated fluster and dragging words weren't. "Don't you dare, 'innick. No, nothing. No touch she's a chiiiild."

The tips of my ears burned in indignation. Who did he think he was, taking control over me like that? It wasn't like Finnick actually meant to seduce me; it was his normal way of speech. It was so ingrained into memory that he did it with every woman he talked to. Not his fault for being forced into a sultry habit. Was I angry? Absolutely. Did I want to punch my mentor in the face? Of course. But did I understand where he was coming from? Unfortunately, yes.

So instead, I remained still and silent and abandoned the rest of my meal.

Mags broke the awkwardness tangible in the air by muttering choice words to Haymitch. He snorted and hiccuped ungracefully, but soon agreed to her grumblings and turned his head for more alcohol. I didn't know exactly what went on just then, but I could barely muster up any kind of gratitude for the old woman. I gave my thanks, but didn't really mean it.

"You're looking homesick," Finnick noted.

My face contorted painfully while I tried to force it into a less telling expression. Finally, it settled on peaceful, and I responded. "It's been a bad day. But yeah, I am a little homesick. The air tastes so salty here. I don't know how you can stand it."

A grin cracked on his face. "It's just the ocean air," he said. "I don't know how you can stand the mountains, where the winter dumps ten feet of snow on you."

"Snowball fights," I challenged.

"Fresh seafood," he retorted.

And then the day brightened just a bit from our banter.

It was only when we boarded the train to the next district did I remember that his games had taken place in an arctic taiga arena. He would never be able to associate positive feelings with snow, but at least I made him smile at the thought of pelting kid brothers with snowballs and muddy slush.

District three wasn't what I expected. The main industry was electronics and other smart devices, yet most of the residents lived in abject poverty. Residents had ashen skin from their time in factories, creating all the electrical and mechanical products for the Capitol. It was amazing how most of these individuals, starting from grade school, knew at least the basics of electronics and engineering. But intelligence didn't equate wisdom, and having too much intelligence creates problems. Such as overthinking things. The district three boy for the seventy fourth Hunger Games - he was bound to create such an ingenious and lethal bomb trap, but ended up blowing up the Career's supplies from oversight. Was. Will? Going to?

The future tenses confused me greatly, as I remembered reading and watching these adventures in the past, but they hadn't even happened yet.

Unfortunately, Beetee had been placed on the opposite end of the dining table, so I couldn't talk about our wire related wins. Perhaps that was for the better. As much as I disapproved at my mental weaknesses, I had to admit that I still wasn't ready to talk about the games to anyone. Especially not for a contrived reason such as sharing a similar taste in weaponry used to kill children as efficiently as possible.

On the train ride to district two, my hands shook so much I cut my palm when whittling a dragon figurine. The splatter of blood on its scaly snout improved the look, I mused in quiet humor, but my prep team had different reactions.

Flavius wanted to order specially instant healing cream from the Capitol stat, Octavia wanted to fit me in lacy black gloves from the excuse of having an ugly clotting scar, and Venia just paled at the sight of blood and left the room. I wondered why Venia had such a small stomach for small matters, especially since she watched the games on television as an avid fan, but then I deduced it was probably because she'd never seen actual wounds in person.

"It'll heal in a few days," I complained.

Flavius gasped. "No. That is way too long for an injury to mar your polished skin. Potentia's going to have to redesign your entire outfit now."

Which my fashion stylist did. Because the small cut was on the hand of the arm with the lightning scar, she decided that wearing my usual sleeveless ensemble would be a walking disaster with gloves. Therefore, my time in the windy, rocky climate of district two was spent in long, itchy velvet sleeves draping down to cover my hands.

The commotion over the thin slice of an injury was the most interesting thing happening during district one and two's banquets. The halls for the final Career districts spoke of great wealth and maintenance, with Justice Halls four times as large as district twelve's and filled with glamorous luxury item furniture and art. Peeta would have a field day in these buildings, treating the walls like an art gallery rather than an office of a small government.

The thought of Peeta reminded me of how he was bound to run into a force field in the seventy fifth games, making Finnick the only person to resuscitate his heart. Finnick's words then rang in my head. 'You look homesick,' he had said. Homesick.

My home wasn't the mansion in Victor's Village. Home was mom and my siblings. And maybe Peeta. Home was my family and friends. That was home.

So yes, I was homesick.

* * *

Finally, after eleven strenuous days, the train arrived back home for our own ceremony.

Kids strung paper lanterns through the streets, running around with their Capitol issued bag of goods. Our family didn't receive one, of course, but it wasn't as if we really needed a bag of essential ingredients and home items, as we were the richest in town alongside Haymitch. Due to my winning of the games, the Capitol itself arranged the ceremonial victory party in my district. Which, as expected, became the most extravagant event of the year. School ended earlier to start and prepare on the festivities, adults were lackluster about their jobs, and everyone, most of all, had fun.

This had to be the best part of the victory tour. Seeing how happy it made my town.

The worst part was the attention.

A crew of cameras and interviewers all but broke into our house to pepper everyone with questions. Luckily for them, my family was still participating in the outdoor festivities. Unluckily for me, I was eating a snack in the kitchen downstairs when the door swung wide open for a crew of about a dozen cameramen and women. My first instinct was to hide the unfortunately placed Peeta in the chair next to mine. Away from the Capitol, away from the cameras. Being exposed to cameras prematurely would definitely change something about the future, I was sure of it.

"And this here is the home of our favorite Blaire Hawthorne from district twelve!" Shouted someone for a voiceover as all the gawking brightly colored people pattered into my home. "And here's lightning girl, eating a snack in her kitchen."

I flashed a glamorous smile. "Oh, hey there! We weren't expecting you for another hour, so I'm afraid that my family's still out celebrating."

Peeta shifted nervously besides me. Like sharks, the cameras all zoomed to his sudden movements.

A short, squat man with neon pink tattoos lining the right side of his face sat down across from us and adjusted his camera to a more approachable level. "And who's this lovely young man besides you?"

And the moment came anyway. My heart leapt into my throat as I tried to think of what to say or what to do for Peeta to be somehow edited out the feature length episode, but fear still hammered through my veins by the time the boy spoke up.

"My name's Peeta Mellark," he said with that instantly likeable, boyish smile of his. "I'm Blaire's friend and business partner."

Now there was no way for his appearance to be cut out.

Fuck.

"Business partner?" The cameraman inquired. Several shuttering shots were taken from around the house as the crew wandered around at their own discretion. My eye twitched.

I put on a comfortable smile and nodded. "Yep. Peeta and I are partners in our special art projects. I whittle and carve, he paints. We combined our talents together and are now looking to sell some of our artwork to my fans. Come on now, we're going to show you!"

I grabbed my friend's hand and practically bounded up the stairs, hearing the heavy footsteps thud behind us. Perhaps holding his hand (his wrist, really) in front of a camera was a bad idea, but I was anxiously trying to get him out of the spotlight, and reacted out of panic.

He shook his hand back, rubbing at the red claw marks around his wrist. I wanted to wince to show an apologetic face, but the cameras were still rolling and touring our studio meant suffering through a tedious, long-lasting smile. "And here's our studio! It's a bit cramped with everything we've been working on, but feel free to tour around. Just don't touch anything."

The crowd oohed and awed at the wood sculptures and figurines, and were absolutely delighted at the finished toadstool village set up in the center of the room. I bribed Gale to take down all the pieces hanging from the ceiling by carving him an elegant new bow for his freakishly long growing boy arms just this morning. They didn't pay attention to the paintings hanging all around the walls due to needing to focus the screen time on the victor, not her painter. A few clay vases holding his paintbrushes and my chiseling tools adorned the handmade tables, at which I proudly boasted the pottery to be from Vick's hands.

They finished up filming a special thirty second clip of the toadstool village out of my request, and then the rest of the family poured in. With five more people to interview, they left Peeta and I alone in the studio.

I kicked a table leg in frustration. "Sorry about that," I said.

He gave a breathy short laugh. "Sorry about what?"

"That you had to be on camera. Now there's probably going to be a news article somewhere picking at our friendship. You'll be the center of attention of the Capitol for, like, a day. Considering these people have the attention span of goldfish, that's saying something."

He shrugged and scratched the back of his head. "Well, good thing I don't live in the Capitol, then. I'll see you after you get back, Blaire. Good luck." Then he gathered his things and sauntered out the door.

His easygoing nature confounded me for a solid minute as I stared stupidly at the open door. What kind of saint possessed that kid's mind? Jesus Christ, I was going to get whiplash.

At six p.m. sharp, I was escorted out the house by a bumbling Effie to the Justice Building, where I'd be giving my final speech. The formulaic "hey I won good for me let's celebrate" speech had to be lackluster in quality, but the crowd still cheered at the prospect of what my victory did for them. District twelve was above such pride about honoring the games. I was reminded of this especially when the crowd lulled in quiet respect during my regretful words to Yonner's family. Being cooped up inside so much meant that I didn't have to wander around town and accidentally bump into any of the Bayaurchs (there were six of them in total - two parents, four siblings), but looking at them ripped up a different kind of hurt in my chest.

By the end of the speech, I finally acknowledged my exhaustion and decided to call it quits. The cameras stopped rolling during the dinners and all the camera crew people were too busy occupied filming outside festivities and editing what footage they managed to get back home, so instead of eating and socializing with the upper members of the district, I laid my head straight down next to my porcelain plate and took a nap.

The aftermath of my rude showing definitely spread rumors about my apparent madness from the games, but at that point, I couldn't care less. Let them point fingers and whisper "that's the lightning girl; the poor, mad girl." I had my family, painter friend, and the support of the Capitol. President Snow couldn't touch me yet.

On the arduous train ride to the Capitol for the huge gala event in honor of wrapping up the victory tour, I even began to feel content.


	8. Chapter 8

**Dreamers Live to Die**

**I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]**

**Published 2020.02.17**

**Edited: 2020.07.05 (lol sorry for the hiatus)**

**A/N: Starting here, this story will be rated M, alongside possible trigger warnings and/or explicit themes.**

**Warning: includes suicidal thoughts, adult language, thoughts of sexual activity (nothing actually happens don't worry), and possible mental health triggers (depression/anxiety)**

* * *

"President Snow requests your presence," a mechanical voice hummed from outside the front door. It woke me up with a startling rolling off the couch. Last night's final Capitol victory party had been wild, only ending until the next day's - today's - sun peeked out from behind the mountains. Perhaps not sleeping during the entire train ride from twelve to the Capitol, knowing a part was going to be held in my honor, was a terribly mistake. My makeup had to be beyond smudged and dress akimbo, but I still opened the door to bark at whoever thought to wake me up before noon.

"Good morning," I hissed.

The man rose an eyebrow at my appearance. He was tall and extraordinarily blue. Blue hair, blue eyes, tinted blue skin, blue suit. If his name wasn't also blue related I'd eat a shoe. "President Snow requests your presence," he repeated. "I am your driver."

"Give me ten minutes," I said, then slammed the door in his face.

Ten minutes later, I emerged out my apartment wearing a shimmery gold dress, matching earrings, and somewhat combed back hair. If I wasn't so tired, I'd apologize to the man for rudely slamming a door in his face. It was a testament to my own fatigue did I not question why Snow would want to see me until I was well out the Victor's Spire and stumbling into his sleek black car.

He responded with, "I am nothing more than a driver."

"Do you have a name?"

He paused to look at me through the rear view mirror. "Indigo."

Ah, so I didn't have to eat a shoe.

He dropped me off in front of a grand restaurant in the center square of the city, near Snow's mansion. Someone outside the restaurant ushered me inside, away from the curious paparazzi snapping pictures as soon as I left the car. Inside, I was led into a private room by one of the waitstaff - a pretty brunette avox - where Snow dined alone, an empty seat across from him.

"Good morning," he greeted, wiping his puffy lips with a napkin. "What a wonderful party last night. I hope you're not too tired for brunch?"

I sat down and began piling food onto my plate. "Even after the feast, I still have quite an appetite. Growing girl and all that," I said with a laugh.

He stretched his lips in what might have been a smile, if his mouth wasn't so mutilated by all the poison. "Good, good. Very good. It's important to be healthy. For your fans."

"My fans are amazing," I gushed emptily. "I auctioned off my work last night at the party for two million - wonderful, right? - which is just amazing. I love their dedication to me."

He leaned forward. "Speaking of fans, one of yours is very adamant about meeting you. Quintius Bast was your strongest sponsor during your games. He's expecting a visit from you tonight at eight in his house."

I dropped my glass. Shards smashed against the ground and a few sliced shallow cuts around my foot. "I'm only thirteen," I managed to choke out.

Avoxes rushed out from hidden corners of the room to sweep away the glass shards. I numbly registered an unknown face lightly dabbing away the tiny blood drops around my big toe. Snow's soft words of attempted comfort - _"he's enamored with your performance, nothing untoward" _\- floated into one ear and out the other. Adult comfort was only to be sought out between two adults, not an adult and a half-child half-dead monstrosity.

I don't quite remember what I said after that, but it must have been a satisfactory filler response because the rest of brunch was spent dizzy in my own thoughts and reflexively picking up little tidbits of unessential pleasantries.

* * *

Quintius Bast was a medium height man with an unusually bland, square jawed face in the throng of the Capitol. He wore extravagant glittery coatsuits, however, that negated any amount of normality to him. Without all the tell tale stretched out skin medically enhanced over his body, I'd place him at around fifty years old. Older than Haymitch. Older than my mother. Older than what my father would have been, if he had been able make it this far.

He rented out an entire rooftop garden for us. The lush green leaves smelled too artificial and chemical for any sort of comfort, for any distraction from the man who sat across from me on the stiff metal garden chairs.

Bast smelled so strongly of honey to the point where the little teacakes we snacked on had little comparable scent or flavor. It was thick, sickly sweet, and as fake as everything else in the Capitol.

His words were also as syrupy as his scent. He spoke with no pompous flair I'd grown to associate with the residents, but instead with long dragging vowels and a warm breathy undertone. "I do hope you're not thinking of removing your commendable battle scars," he said after we finished all our teacakes and pleasant greetings.

I stared at my fists curled up in my lap, flowy sleeves covering them both up to the fingertips so the burns didn't show. "Don't worry," I said, still pretending to be busy examining the little lace patterns in my sleeves. "I've grown fond of my 'battle scars.'"

It took all my willpower to not flinch when he dragged his chair up right next to mine, the scratching of metal legs against brick floor ringing in my ears distracting from the equally disorienting pain of feeling a heavy arm rest on my back. The syrupy honey intensified with rising goosebumps. Neon pink fake flowers, blooming little pockets of luminous grass in obsessively prim pot arrangements, the overbearing stench of honey, the ringing in my ears... I didn't realize I was holding my breath until my vision blurred and my throat started burning.

"I'm sorry," I said, before my throat could close up and release pitiful cracked noises.

He made little shushing noises, the sugary undercurrent of his breath against my ear. His arm wrapped around me suddenly felt warm and comforting, so I leaned against his shoulder and cried.

In the moment, he felt soft and safe. He felt like a nice adult rubbing soothing circles into my back as I cried over absolutely nothing and stained his expensive coat lapel with snot and salty tears. I hated him for being so comforting, but I hated myself even more when I gathered my senses after a few minutes and Bast continued to hold onto my limp body. Of course I knew he didn't actually care about me, only what I represented to him and what I would be in three years.

But he was there. He was someone who was honest with his intentions and knew exactly what he wanted without leading on. At the end of the allotted two hour meeting just grazing in the man made gardens soaking up sunlight, he kissed the top of my head and pressed a glittery diamond brooch into my hands. He was so _there _that I couldn't help but find silly comfort in the idea of him. A sick man and a sick girl.

* * *

Two weeks after returning home, when the snow finally began to recede and hordes of hail and slush replaced it, mom died.

It was an accident, they said. She made weekly rounds around the small mines at the far eastern border of the district, where the coal mine that killed so many of our men had recently been reopened. The lovely Hazelle Hawthorne loved donating loaves of bread to hungry workers, they said. And then something, maybe a squirrel, knocked down an oil drum supply canister onto her skirts. Embers from the miners' fire gallons spread from a sudden chilly breeze and then...

And then she burned alive.

"It was an accident."

They were the first words I heard when Gale and I stepped into the Hob to trade his game. He never stopped hunting, needing to provide the meat for the desperate people of twelve. He donated the money to his favorite vendors and probably slipped a little something to Katniss. I didn't really care what he did in his personal time, but today was a day where I accompanied him to the factory market for some economic flow using our money.

Our faces blanched to white when a few more haggard, slightly burnt people stumbled into the Hob's entryway.

"I'm sorry for your loss" was another popular sentence used by the people. Everyone knew our names and faces, Gale being the hunter and me a victor. Vendors and buyers alike turned their heads to hear the situation unfolding.

Mom died. Fire. Burned _alive_. Never stopped screaming until she was little more than charred bone.

I took off after Gale, who finally cleared his head from the shock of the news. At first, I thought he was darting towards the graveyard of a mine, but then he took a left turn and headed to the school.

In the mindless chaos, he dropped his game bag on the ground, but now wasn't the time to ask citizens to not raid at the free meat. Strangely enough, my mind still felt clear and collected. The world shone brightly with a resounding and surprising clarity. There was no angry red haze. No emotions. No tears. No nothing. Nonetheless, I ran to catch up to Gale to tell him I was heading home to get Posy.

He didn't say anything, just ran faster.

I was completely out of breath and my sides were hurting from the exertion, but at the sight of Posy sleeping in the babysitter's arms in the living room seemingly vanished all the pain.

Mrs. Cartwright was a thirty something year old woman with a daughter two years younger than I. Delilah or Delly or something. The first bout of emotion erupting through me was frantically reaching out for my sister, needing her in my arms as physical reassurance. Mrs. Cartwright deftly handed over the toddler.

"Is everything alright, dear?" She asked, curling a wisp of caramel blonde hair behind her ear.

"There was an accident," I told her in a steady monotonous tone. "She's... gone. Mom's dead. She's dead."

And then I broke down, the dam finally bursting open. Posy never woke during my fit of tears. She sighed calmly and hummed peacefully through her sleep, contrasting so heavily with the ugly sobs and snot running down my puffy red nose. Mrs. Cartwright never took my sister from my trembling arms, knowing that even with my weakening grip, I'd never ever drop her. Never hurt a hair on her head.

Because there was already too much hurt. Mom was gone. Dead. Away. In a better place, I wanted to imagine. Far, far away from the politics and games of Panem.

Away from President Snow.

"It was an accident."

No, it was not. I made a mistake and this was how I paid for it. Only because I came back to my senses with Bast did Snow spare my siblings.

The people of twelve loved mom. The first rich person to actually use their wealth for good. While twelve's first victor apparently died from a morphling addiction, Haymitch drank his days away, and I spent most of the day cooped up inside with paint fumes and splinters, mom became a productive member of society. She made her rounds around the town buying products, donating food baskets, and turning a blind eye to Gale's hunting habits. They loved her. They really did. So how could absolutely no one prevent her from burning away into a crisp?

Because Posy was only three years old, I didn't doubt that eventually, she'd forget what mom looked like. We had a few pictures on the living room mantelpieces of her and dad on their wedding day and a few more after, but it wouldn't be the same. Posy wouldn't be able to look at her pictures and associate the memory with the smell of fresh lavender, a sunny smile, and the warm tingly feeling of her embraces. The utter guilt from not being able to fully satisfy Snow's customer weighed heavily on mind as I meandered down the path to the eastern mine. The freezing air whipped my overgrown bangs into my eyes and chilled my extremities, but I gave all my body heat to my sister wrapped up in a shawl in my arms. My toes felt like ice in my slush soaked boots by the time I reached the scene of the crime.

The smell of burnt flesh hit my senses first. It was an awful, putrid thing that seeped into my nose and blindsided me for a full second. Before I could digest the image of a soot covered miner covering the black and red misshapen form on the dirt with a dusty white blanket, two men emerged from my sides and quickly blocked the view.

They said something about going home or that I shouldn't be there, but all I wanted to see was my mom. Hazelle Hawthorne. She felt more of a friend than a mom, considering we were about the same age, mentally. She worked to the bone providing for her family, and this was how the world treated her? Nothing but burnt flesh on the soggy ground. I called out her name several times, but the words rang empty yet disorienting in my head. And then Posy began to cry as the screams dried out in my throat. She didn't understand what was going on, but felt everyone's pain. I told the miners I wanted to see my mom, but then one of them scooped me up into their arms like a baby, Posy still wailing against my chest. The rest of the day was a blur of pain. Going home. Gale, Vick, and Rory sitting silently at the fireplace. Posy's endless tears triggering Vick's tears and Rory to quickly storm outside.

The next day was slightly better. Exhaustion cleared overnight from regretful sleep (thinking about how mom now sleeps forever), so the rushed funeral procession made underlying, mature emotions come to light.

Both our parents were dead. That made Gale the oldest. The mayor provided him with a medal of valor during the funeral, for now being responsible for our family, but he all but yanked it off and tossed it to the ground. Rory picked it up and placed the shiny metal into my skirt pocket. Gale and I were still thirteen. Thirteen and responsible for three kids, not including ourselves.

A dark part of my mind murmured how it was good I had been selected for the games and won. With the money, neither my twin nor I had to worry about providing food on the table anymore. We were devastated, but still would be able to head back home and cook a mouthwatering stew for dinner. What of the other kids? The other orphans? Ones whose parents died or could not otherwise work? Many people in our district suffered from undeniable loss, but we were the ones able to still mourn in relative silence, away in our rich home and bathtub of coins.

Maybe this was what mom had been getting at, making all those rounds around the town. Providing to the poor, the weak, the needy.

In the following days, all five of us cooped up inside, not talking. Rory spent a questionable amount of time throwing sticks and stones at the malformed seven foot tall oaks in the backyard. Posy wanted mom to sing her lullabies before sleep because she didn't understand what I meant by "gone." So instead I warbled out a few old songs from a lifetime ago to soothe her cries. She was old enough to not sleep in a crib anymore, and I didn't want to enter what used to be her and mom's room, so she slept against my chest in Gale's room. Everywhere in the house smelled of her lavender soap and warmth except for his bedroom, from the amount of stray pine needles and dirty outside boots with earthy undertones he brought into the room. We just kind of all dog-piled onto the queen sized bed, pretending everything was okay while the world crashed above us.

It was a strange thought that now thirteen year olds had to raise a three year old toddler. Our brothers were too old for us to parent them, but Gale and I couldn't just be siblings anymore. With our financial situation fixed until the day I myself kicked the bucket, we couldn't even be considered their caregiver. At best, we were role models, for Vick and Rory to look at the older, more mature person in the house and try to emulate them.

But who was I kidding? I was a terrible role model. Gale, while only six minutes older yet twenty years younger, was the better twin. He never killed anyone. Never killed innocent children. Went outside for more than ten minutes at a time. Actually successfully socialized with more than one peer at a time. Still went to school. Had more than one friend. Where did that leave me? The opposite of him. I couldn't raise my sister. I couldn't be the role model my brothers needed. All I did was win a stupid death battle by sacrificing my grip on sanity.

So I hired Mrs. Cartwright full time.

I was weak. I was supposed to be_ there_ for my siblings, not receding further into my mind. I felt ashamed that I paid some stranger, someone else's mother, to take care of my two eight year olds and toddler. Gale even sacrificed a lot of his hunting hours to raise our siblings, while I just increased my hours away from reality. In the studio, when Peeta's presence wasn't around to motivate me to whittle, I just sat in the corner next behind his canvas stands, feeling twitchy at odd noises that really couldn't be all there and having tears come and go for no apparent reason.

Peeta reduced his visits to every Sunday morning. Even though I enjoyed his presence, my heart clenched with dread whenever his time of arrival neared. Nervous. Afraid. Terrified that he'd come up to the studio, see the dirty skeleton of a person rocking on the floor humming a children's song and whittling hundreds of flowers, and then decide it was time for him to leave. One time I found my hands carving a hazel plant before realizing what I had done. All the strength had seeped out my limbs and I dropped the piece on the ground and sobbed uncontrollably. Peeta left the room - I feared for good - but came back a short time afterwards with a blanket and a mug of hot tea. He tried to say something all nicely, but his voice tuned out in my ears until all the tea disappeared from the mug.

I became eternally grateful of his patience and him willing to look over my lack of mental functionality for us to continue hanging out. The boy with the bread, my hero. Perhaps out of thanks for the money from our sale in the Capitol (he wore very smart, well tailored clothing now), but that didn't matter. He still came over and that was what mattered.

The last dregs of winter disappeared from the ground in April. Every night, I dreamed of seeing mom's charred body, the boy from eight's wide open eyes (were they blue? brown? green?) after his electrocution, a blanket of wool trapping my siblings to a golden trident during a lightning storm, and Quintius Bast's hot sugary breath on my neck. I barely slept, barely ate, barely went outside. I didn't like looking into the bathroom mirror to see protruding ribs and much too angular collar bones, so I did try to eat. Honestly. But meals never seemed appetizing anymore, even though my senses registered them as tasty.

And then when I floated down the stairs one awfully sunny morning, a great shock eclipsed.

A few boys sat around the kitchen counter, piling an assortment of pastries and egg dishes into their plates from a fancy glass multi-tiered server. They all appeared vaguely familiar, in the way that third cousins did. The brain recognized them from family photos and such, but never actually created the connection of relation.

"Hey, Blaire," Gale greeted, coming in from the living room with an armful of extra glass plates and a wiry teenage boy right behind him. His voice was tentative, as if he were speaking to a scared, injured animal.

I breezed through the kitchen, plucking a cheese danish from the table, ignoring the stock-still strangers. "What's going on?"

My voice felt light and whispery from having not spoken a great deal in the past months. Soft spoken. Girlish. Delicate.

My brother - when had he grown so tall? - stood awkwardly next to the open mouthed boy behind him. "It's May seventeenth, Blaire," he said.

The date seemed unfamiliar. Far off. Garish. Made no sense to have a spectacle about it.

"It's our birthday today. We're fourteen years old now."

Fourteen. Today we turned fourteen. May seventeenth. I nodded, not really understanding his words. Birthday. Our birthday? My birthday? I flitted back up the stairs, pastry in hand. I enjoyed the sensation of ghosting over the floorboards, feeling like a fairy with my light steps and noiseless walk. I thought about whittling a fairy, a miniature Tinkerbell, now, but someone stood in front of my studio, peering through the crack in the open door. One of Gale's friends he had over, I assumed. Because confrontation sounded much too energy consuming, I instead turned back to a different hallway, where my bedroom was.

The door creaked noisily open from weeks of disuse. A small layer of dust coated parts of the room, but that wasn't what made me feel so disconnected to it. Perhaps it was the unused bed, the clutter of unfolded clothes on the desk, the musty smell. But no - in my pounding heart, I knew it to be because I could barely recognize it. I hadn't been in here for more than a few minutes at a time ever since...

Ever since... when? I scrounged through my brain, conjuring up the times I had needed to enter my bedroom. Change of clothes? Gathering neglected hygiene materials? When?

I felt scared. Terrified, even. I raced to the adjacent bathroom before my breathing became louder, then drowned out the noise under a rush of the shower. The water scalded my scalp and skin, but the burn felt almost justified. When was the last time I had cared to shower? A week? Two weeks?

By the time my fingers pruned and everything felt squeaky clean and shiny, the date Gale mentioned rang true.

What day was it? May seventeenth. My birthday. Today was my _birthday_.

I pulled on a crisp new blouse, skirt, and thin stockings. My hair grazed the tops of my shoulders, so I found a pair of scarily sharp scissors in my bathroom and sheered the tips off, leaving the rest to spike out at just below my jawline. My bangs were also dragging annoyingly into my eyes, so they were pulled back in a puffy half ponytail with a bright turquoise ribbon that I couldn't recall ever buying.

Even though I looked better than I had for the last few months, my mind still raced chaotically. May seventeenth. Seventeenth of May. Birthday. _My_ birthday.

I dropped the hairbrush, barely registering the clatter of wood meeting the bathroom floor tiles. "It's my birthday today," I croaked out to the mirror. "I'm fourteen."

The girl in the mirror was a stranger. Too thin, too pale, ugly purplish bruises under her eyes from a lack of sleep. Clothes practically hanging off her frame in a comedic manner. Wouldn't someone as rich as that girl be able to purchase clothes in her size? _But they were her size, back when she bought them. _

Registering that the girl in the mirror was, in fact, _me_ was a hard pill to swallow. A year ago, back in the Seam, I looked better fed. Where did that put me? Last year, a thirteen year old bordering eighty five pounds. Right now, a fourteen year old who couldn't be anymore than seventy pounds.

I was sick.

Very sick.

What was this? Depression? Anxiety? Psychotic break? PTSD? All the above? Whatever it was, my physical health declined heavily ever since the moment Quintius touched me with his ice cold hands.

Running from my problems wouldn't solve anything, but at the moment, it appeared to be the best solution. I scarfed down the rest of my cheese danish laying on the cold, unused bed, more out of fear that if I forgot another meal I'd waste away into a skeleton than actual hunger. Downstairs, all the boys left, leaving only a scant few half eaten plates out by the sink. A melody of shouting and laughter echoed from the backyard. I laced up a pair of worn leather boots and strolled right out the front door.

The warmth of the summer sun radiated intensely. A fine layer of sweat beaded at my forehead, but it soon evaporated once I walked down to the Seam, to the meadow, under the wire fence, and reached the cool shade underneath blankets of tall pines and oaks. When was the last time I had gone past the fence into the forest? I couldn't remember.

Half forgotten trails and paths sprung back up in the haze of relearning everything. I plucked dry strips of bark and weathered vines along the way to the lake I yearned to visit again. My hands crafted two yards of strong braided rope by the time the lake became visible. This wasn't Katniss' foretold spot of safety, no, but I didn't care if this lake had empty concrete houses along its banks or not.

I stripped down to the nude and sank into the refreshing waters after the two hour walk. The lake hid behind huge craggy rocks and shaggy twenty foot tall willows, and I recalled the time when Gale and I first discovered it. During a climbing contest, to see who could climb the highest alongside the thick vines of the rocks. Naturally, I won, but a squirrel jumping from a tree right in front of me scared me senseless, so I dislodged my hands from their grip and flailed straight down the other side of the rocks. Gale had shouted in worry, knowing futilely no one else was around for miles, but I hadn't ended up injured. A little bruised, but I had ended up splashing into the shallow part of a water lily and cat tail infested lake. With my helpful instruction, Gale had ended up climbing over, too, and laughed at the amount of mud in my hair.

Little fish nipped my naked behind in the icy freshwater as I paddled around on my back. The sun heated up as the day dragged on, so I wove together a makeshift hat of sorts from water lettuce and loose reeds. I stripped down my rope from earlier to create a small net to carry gathered clovers from a little beyond the banks alongside a pleasant surprise of a patch of wild rhubarb growing just by the enclosing trees. Clover and rhubarb. Would make a nice pie.

I lazed the whole day away outside swimming in the lake, climbing dangerously tall trees, and gathering wild plants into my little net. Most of the edible plants out here tasted quite bitter, but the nostalgia of doing this with Gale when we were younger was just too much for me to ignore. The sun verged its end by the time I retraced my steps back to the meadow south of the Seam. Although tired, I had enough sense to hide the net of wild plants under my skirts passing through the district. The Peacekeepers, primarily the mildly likeable Darius, weren't the type of inflict typical punishments. They wanted the outside meat and wild plants as much as the rest of the people who shopped at the Hob did. But just dragging it out in plain sight? Not the smartest way to result in flagellation. Not the the head Peacekeeper Cray would bother with that, luckily. A vague memory of a new Peacekeeper after the seventy fourth games trickled into mind. What was his name? Some guy who caused a ruckus to Katniss' mind in the books, something about...

I stopped right before entering the iron wrought gateway to Victor's Village. Stopped. To think. That the new head Peacekeeper caused a ruckus in the district by _whipping Gale. _The first intense emotion I had felt in months other than sadness and depression: anger. Pure, unadultered anger. Justified madness. Someone was going to _hurt_ my brother and oh, how was it described? Dozens of lashes, marring his back into ripped open, raw flesh. So painful the only medicine that could help him was morphling. Pain killers. Morphling, unlike most other painkillers, didn't have anti-inflammatory medicinal aid. The drug had only one purpose - to relive people of their pain. While an addiction caused serious cognitive blocks after a long enough use, the drug was otherwise rather harmless, if disorienting.

The sun poured out warm reds, soft oranges, and mellow pinks once I calmed myself enough to continue walking back home. I swung the door open, noticing the slight hum of people chatting inside. In the cozy dining room, lavender scented candles adorned the fireplace mantle. Gale and four unfamiliar boys - friends, perhaps - sat alongside a simple feast of tomato stews and meat pies. I set my net of plants down on the table, next to a pot of broth.

In the high of having had a lustrous day outside, I hummed the Happy Birthday song from Before as I took a seat besides one of Gale's smaller friends. He didn't look fourteen. He looked twelve, at most. And so did the one in front of me.

"Hello, Blaire," the one next to me said.

I smiled brightly. "Hello."

"Do you remember what day it is?" He spoke all calm and smooth in a practiced tone.

May seventeenth. "It's my birthday," I chirped. Birthday girl and birthday boy.

His smile wore an unusual amount of relief, as if he expected a different answer. I refused to frown thoughtfully, wanting to continue on with my good mood as long as possible.

Gale, off at the head of the table, chuckled. "She's humming her made-up birthday song from when we were younger."

The wiry teenager at his right with a head of dark curls and brownish olive skin gasped. "Oh! I remember - you sang that under your breath at school whenever someone told the class it was their birthday. Remember?"

Even if I squinted, the boy didn't look the slightest bit familiar. He noticed my silence. "Remember me? I'm Thom. We sat at the same table in school."

Thom. Thom? Not wanting to be rude, I nodded politely, not wanting to tell him I barely even recognized his name.

"And I'm Bristel," a tan boy with a close shaven head to Gale's left added. "I used to play hit the can with your brothers at recess time a lot."

That caught my attention. "My brothers? Where are my brothers?"

The table fell utterly silent. I stopped humming.

"Blaire," the boy to my right said carefully. "Do you remember me?"

"Of course she doesn't - she's been in loony town for the past few months!" Hissed out the one across the table.

The two boys were also twins. They had wild black curls, iron grey eyes, and golden olive skin. They also looked very much like Vick and Rory, if a bit older.

Vick and Rory.

My little brothers. They were... almost ten, by now?

The realization hit me like a bag of bricks. Instant shame fled through my system. I didn't want to apologize, say sorry, tell them everything was going to be alright. Because everything wasn't alright. For I hadn't been able to recognize Vick by my side and Rory across the table. I hadn't been able to recognize my own brothers.

Tears unwillingly leaked from my eyes and a small wail escaped my lips. I raced out the room, but not before I heard Vick mutter tiredly: "Maybe you're right."

I locked myself in my bedroom and slipped under the blankets. Throughout the spring, I had only rested in a small nook in my studio, under the window. Such comforts of a mattress and silky soft sheets, if dusty, felt unreal. Like I was swarmed in a fluffy cloud. But the soft sensations escaped me when I retraced the previous conversation in the dining room.

Vick. Rory.

Rory. Vick.

Brothers. My younger twin brothers. They looked so much older; so much more haunted.

Where did that leave the youngest? When was the last time I had seen Posy? Mrs. Cartwright? Where were they?

My anxiety crept up and built over what felt like an eternity but could only have been hours. The moon shone brightly through the windowpanes overlooking the bedroom and I stared at the dust molecules falling up and down through the pale light. And - without thinking - I slipped out of the all too consuming blankets and tiptoed downstairs and out the door. My bare feet crunched rough bits of dirt outside, but I ignored it in favor of what the little voice in my head ordered.

Haymitch's lights were never on - but then again, he never was awake long enough to justify using electricity - but I knew he'd be awake eventually, if not by now. Perhaps even before the rest of the town. He always woke up at around three a.m. for a starter drink. I quietly slipped into his house and heard the man groaning in his kitchen. Good. Maybe he'd sober up.

I didn't want to speak. To talk. To do _anything_ but lay down and cry. Thus, I did the one thing I was best at - showing everything with my hands. I ripped off a ragged faded pink curtain off one of the front windows, hearing Haymitch startle with a shout. My wandering into his kitchen to the more livable lounge area made him stumble on after me to take a seat on the couch across from mine. He said something, but I paid no attention to his words and only to the three by six feet curtain. In almost meditative motions, my hands stripped off cords of fabric to braid a durable rope. Then, using the bare knowledge from ten minutes at the rope tying station from the Training Center all those months ago, I fastened it into a loose noose.

And then I looked up.

Haymitch sat still as a statue. His eyes zoomed in with intent on the noose tie for an uneasy few minutes before he broke the silence.

"Since when?" He said simply. A bottle of white liquor at his side settled gently onto the coffee table between us.

"Since..." I paused. Since when? Everything. All the time. Always. "Today's my birthday, did you know?"

His face showed no emotion.

"I didn't," I prattled on. "Gale told me this morning, at breakfast. He had a bunch of friends over, too. And they all just looked at me with of a mixture of pity and worry because... because I'm - I'm a mad one. The poor, mad girl from twelve. And I'm so far gone I can't even recognize what my little brothers look anymore! Who am I? Who are they? I don't know what's going on anymore. I just... I don't..."

He interrupted me by shifting the bottle to my direction. I grabbed it, took a whiff, then gulped down a long, burning drink. It was horrible, yet the woozy pain in my brain and throat was better to focus on than everything else.

"If you die, then what'll happen to your family?" Haymitch proposed, extending his arms over to table to snatch the drink out of my hands. He took a huge swig before continuing. "See it this way: a victor, unhappy with their success. The Capitol devastated over the tragedy. An angry president. An unlucky family, right there as the scapegoat and example."

"No," I refused. "It's not being rebellious against anyone. It's the want - no, the _need_ \- for freedom."

He sighed. "What happened to whittling, sweetheart?"

"There's a way, isn't there? To make it all stop?!" I demanded. "You and your stupid rebellion uprising isn't going to work if everyone dies in the end!"

I realized what I spilled out right before finishing the sentence. But I couldn't help it. After years of bottling everything up, it felt so natural to tell someone. Someone who would understand. A key player in the scheme of things.

He dropped his bottle to the ground, unknowingly letting dozens of shards of glass and sharp smelling liquid soak the carpet. "Blaire," he choked. "Repeat what you just said."

I thought of the Capitol forcing dad to work in unsafe conditions, resulting in his untimely death. Of mom's agonizing demise. Of my siblings going without a mother, without a sister. Of Gale's best friend's life going to be ruined by the games. Of the death of thousands. Of the entire district twelve being razed to the ground, leaving behind only a mass graveyard of broken in skulls and scurrying rats. Of Quintius Bast's hands rubbing gentle circles into my back when I so desperately wanted him to stop and continue at the same time. Of the disgusting things done to my body by the Capitol. Of the murder of twenty three innocent children every year, broadcasted on national television like sport. "To spark a rebellion, you need a flame. Find your flame. Until then, get the fuck over yourself you sorry little shit! Yeah, you've had it bad. So what?! If you're gonna be a bitch don't take it out on me, you _coward_."

And then I stormed out the house. Unbeknownst to my irrational self, I had left my noose in Haymitch's house without thinking. That was probably what saved me that day - utter rage.

The weeks following, I tried remedying the relationships with my family. Gale welcomed my mental return with open arms, saying everything ever so delicately in a forced casual tone, just as mom had done when I had returned home from the games. I made a point to eat every meal downstairs at the table next to at least one sibling. Posy spent a lot of time with Mrs. Cartwright and at the Cartwright home ("better suited environment, with other children her age," Gale said with a hint of sorrow), but she did welcome me with exciting fervor. It was like I had never left her. The twins were a more difficult story. They were old enough to understand why I was such an absent sister, but not mature enough to digest it and correlate it with my behavior. Vick still made an effort to know me again. Rory, however, shunned everything. I deserved his hatred. I deserved to be hated - I wasn't a good person. And he realized that fully.

It still hurt to see his brows furrow in my presence, though.

Mrs. Everdeen provided a list of special medicines that treated mental health. There were none in district twelve, but a special shipment from the Capitol came after a few calls (in my time during the victory tour, I had finally figured out the numbers to call for buying special items or other). The cost was hefty, but practically nothing could burn through the copious amounts of money under the Hawthorne name, anyway.

Life took a turn for the better as summer approached.

But then the seventieth games struck true.


	9. Chapter 9

**Dreamers Live to Die**

**I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]**

**Published 2020.07.06**

**70th Hunger Games**

**Warning: adult language, possible mental health triggers, talking about non-consensual sexual activity (but nothing happens, don't worry)**

**(Note: most of this story and future chapters are written before the prequel was released, so I'm just throwing in Lucy Baird's name in here when they talk about district twelve's past victors. Blaire doesn't know anything about Lucy or President Snow other than the main trilogy knowledge, but she might be suspicious about why the tenth games aren't talked about if I edit one of the future chapters, idk)**

**(Note: the new cover image is something I drew with a dark grey felt pen. It's a sketch of Blaire if you couldn't tell and I tried to make her expression look as somber as possible to reflect her own thoughts/experiences lol. Hope you like it!)**

* * *

Two more hours until two p.m.

The clock ticked away. I wanted to smash the device to the ground.

Two more hours until the reaping ceremony.

The warm summer air's mugginess thickened as the hours ticked by. I slammed the windows shut. I groomed my locks into a manageable bob, snipping away a few annoyingly spiky hairs jutting out behind my ears. I tugged on a crisp creamy white blouse and olive green skirt, knowing that wearing anything else would make me associate my clothes as foreign. Wearing familiar outfits meant a brief lull in security before heading back to the Capitol. Back to the games. Back to Snow.

I walked alongside my family, very quiet and out of it. Rory never seemed to have forgiven me ever since the incident in May, but Vick at least stayed close to me and made sure to grasp my hand tight before heading to the tied off back sections of the reaping ceremony in front of the Justice Building. Gale engulfed me in a deep embrace, his chin resting atop my head, before dragging himself to the male's fourteens section.

In the crowd, familiar faces popped up. Right at the front. Peeta Mellark. He glanced up at my new position on the temporary stage, standing a safe distance away from the wobbling Haymitch. I couldn't even reassure him with a smile, because all I could think about was how telling him that everything was going to be alright would be a lie because the seventy fourth games were in four years.

Mayor Undersee exited the Justice Building to trot down onto the platform. He nodded brusquely at me in recognition before starting the ceremony.

"It is both a time for repentance and a time for thanks," he announced after the short video about the history of the games played on the encompassing screens. And then he read the short list of district twelve's victors - Blaire Hawthorne of the sixty-ninth games, Haymitch Abernathy of the fiftieth games, and the deceased victor of the twelfth games. There was also a rumor floating around that there had been one before the twelfth games, but they weren't televised to the districts so we didn't know much about the possible missing person. Nobody in the district could provide much information about silly myths, which I would've found suspicious if not for the fact that pretty much everything about the Panem government was suspicious. After that, we were both able to sit down on our provided seats, to which Haymitch nodded off and curled up into a nap, taking two seats at once.

Effie Trinket bounded out from the Justice Building and hopped up onto the stage. She offered me an elegant hug and two quick kisses on my cheeks, a look of hidden disgust at Haymitch, and then started her piece. "Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor! It is such an honor to be here, to be able to select district twelve's tributes. All of Panem watches on, jumping in their seat, just to see every districts' reaping ceremonies!"

She chimed a shrill "ladies first!" on her way to reap the female tribute. I looked to the sea of girls, trying to catch a familiar face I didn't want to be reaped. Katniss stood awkwardly in the front, but I knew her to be saved for the future. Mrs. Cartwright's daughter was behind her, trying not cry in that puffy eyed way. A few recognizable classmates peppered the sections, but I couldn't find it in my heart to not despair if they were chosen.

Effie primed her fluffy shoulder puffs on her obnoxiously yellow dress before smoothing the creases in the slip of paper for the female tribute she had just picked out. "Beau Trixon!"

A slim golden haired, sky blue eyed slip of a girl tentatively made her way from the front. The twelve year old child clenched her fists against her pasty pink skirts as I pushed down the feeling of horror at her age. Twelve. Not even a teenager. A prepubescent little girl.

She had less chances than I did, and I barely won with my life (and most of my flesh).

"Anton Riggsbee!" To my horror, another child emerged from the twelves section up front. At that moment, I envied how out of the world Haymitch drank himself to be this morning. He had matching golden hair and blue eyes, but a smattering of freckles not unlike my own stretched from cheek to nose to cheek. He slowly trembled up the stage next to Beau, the two children both looking directly at their feet and trying not to cry.

The mayor read the Treaty of Treason, then motioned for the two tributes to shake hands. The anthem of Panem played on and a few inappropriate claps echoed from the crowd. Haymitch woke up at the blaring song with a bleary eyed scowl. Peacekeepers marched on stage from their position at its sides and escorted our small group into the Justice Building. The little girl and boy were locked into waiting rooms for their last hour of farewells while Haymitch groggily dragged himself to the nearest couch by the doors and passed out once again.

In the hour left, I slipped out my whittling knife from my sleeve and the block of wood hidden in my skirt pocket. Perhaps the outline of the wood had created a bumpy indent on my skirt, but I didn't care much about looking symmetrical than having a soothing activity for my skittish hands. I crafted two poppy flowers - one for each child about to die - by the time the hour was up and the last of the guests had left the building. Peacekeepers standing roughly about the building marched the puffy eyed tributes out their rooms and off to the train station. Effie shared a car with Beau and Anton while I dragged Haymitch into the leading car with me.

"They're going to die," he gruffed out, leaning against the car window. I wanted to disagree just to spite him but couldn't. Because they_ were_ going to die.

"Did you think the same with me, last year?" I questioned instead, trying not to imagine how terrified they must be back with the eccentric Effie spouting the glory of the games.

He grunted. "At least you didn't cry. They don't look like they can pierce two words together without stuttering." He offered a flask from inside his vest pocket. "I'd drink this if I were you."

I denied the offer and awaited the train station.

More cameras whirled around in the small station, no doubt creating the ending of twelve's reaping ceremony airing live on television. Once inside the train carriages and away from the cameras (still recorded, but not for public audiences), Beau finally burst out into ugly sobs and Anton hid his face in his small, pale hands.

"Oh dear," Effie fretted. "Don't cry now. It's unbecoming of a tribute."

She gave me an awkward look then slowly walked out the lounge carriage to a different one. Her private quarters, perhaps. That left me with a snoring Haymitch half on a couch half sprawled on the carpet and two crying children.

They finally wobbled side by side into a sofa booth. I gathered several plates of decadent food from the center tables, placed them on the booth table, and sat across from them. I hacked off a chunk of mahogany wood from the tabletop behind us and began to whittle until their sniffles disappeared.

The first person to speak up was Beau. "I don't want to die," she choked out.

I looked up from whittling my seventh tiger lily. Except I didn't have my painter friend to color its distinctive orange and black petals, so it just looked like a normal, if elongated, lily.

"It may be my first year as a mentor," I said carefully. "But I will do everything in my power to make sure you survive the games."

"What about our other mentor?" Anton asked.

"He usually has valuable advice, but you can only get that out of him if he's not stone cold drunk."

Haymitch's snores echoed in the crystalline room.

I wanted to rest in my private quarters, but leaving the two children alone left a foul taste in my mouth, so I braved through the rest of the day in the main cabin of the train. Apparently they knew each other well enough to break into quiet conversation without bothering to let me awkwardly intrude in any conversation, so I left them at that and sat a few couches away from them out of politeness. Something I noticed this time around, there were more bottles of alcoholic beverages offered. Presumably for my accompaniment alongside Haymitch.

The next few hours consisted of Beau and Anton stuffing themselves silly on capitol food and quietly chatting about something I didn't care enough to eavesdrop on. The dull sound of wind rattling against the industrial windows and low voiced chatter became background noise to concentrate on fumbling with another chunk of mahogany hacked off the dining table.

Effie didn't need to know.

The children filed out the main cabin into their own corridors by the time the train stopped to refuel. I allowed myself the break to slip into my own private quarters and shut out the rest of the world. Octavia, Flavius, and Venia were no longer my personal stylists, so I was surprised to find Venia knocking on my door towards dinner time for a small re acquaintance. Apparently the styling crew now had to escort district twelve tributes to the extent of Effie, as they also now had to manage my own image. Her dumb affection blinded me, but I made sure to heed her helpful beauty tips and let her choose which of the provided dresses to wear for tomorrow's appearance at the Capitol.

The issue with past victors returning as a mentor for the first time, she explained in not so many words, was that sometimes they outshined the current arriving tributes. It depended on the past victor's popularity and the state of their tributes. Because Beau and Anton were only boring little children, news outlets and flashing cameras would pass over them in favor of their newly returning lightning girl. It didn't help how my body developed a little more into something resembling a womanly figure in the past few months, or how all of the dresses provided were sleeveless.

Venia continued to warble on about mindless topics, but what little information I gleaned from her was incredibly useful to know. My victory tour hadn't been full of social interactions with much anyone, not even my stylists, but I'd make sure to remedy that from now on.

None of the small blond haired children sought me out the next morning in the hours before arriving at the train station, so I continued my tirade of butchering the rest of the table and whittling cute little objects for my own enjoyment.

(Effie didn't need to know. No, really, she didn't.)

I made sure to check on Haymitch the hour leading up to docking, at the very least. His body strewn half on the bed half on the ground, smelling of vomit and alcohol, seemed so normal now. Because personal hygiene was his own problem, not mine, I made sure to kick his bedstand table hard enough for him to wake at the sudden noise. An hour of prep time should be enough for him to shower off his stench by himself. Hopefully.

My outfit for the day comprised of thin strap white summer dress reaching above my knees. The heat from the summer weather burned straight into my soul when the train finally docked and we were greeted with the flashing lights of paparazzi and news outlets alongside a terrible heat wave. The air was drier here, where my throat felt crackly already in the short walk to a private car with Haymitch. Effie took the two tributes in the following car, and we departed to the Remake Center. Following my past footprints was a little uncomfortable, but I entertained myself in our district twelve waiting room by discussing inane topics with Effie while waiting on Beau and Anton's transformations.

When Effie was excited about a certain topic, she started to gesture loudly and her pitch lilted upwards even more prominently at the end of her sentences. " - and _pearls_, my goodness, so last season! Rhys should've known that it's all about rubies right now. And don't let me get started on Boris, who thought he could get away with wearing garnets instead of rubies for the morning banquet."

I nodded along dutifully, trying to filter through the clutter for bits of important information used for my own status. Gemstones were seasonal? Wearing colored contacts in certain cafes was a social faux?

At a sentence break, I finally butted in. "Oh, Effie! I've just realized something important."

She gasped and tutted.

"What am I going to do while Beau and Anton are completing their three days of training?" I asked, buttering up as much as possible. "Do you think it's okay if I hang out with you on one of those _dreadfully boring _days?"

Effie let out a small shriek, bounding up from her seat over to my part of the couch and clasped my hands. Haymitch, somewhere in the corner, grumbled something incoherent. She instantly agreed to a morning cafe hopping session and a bunch of other activities I wasn't sure I wanted to waste time on. Nonetheless, I gave an easy agree. Familiarizing myself with Capitol customs, people, and general area couldn't be anything counterproductive.

Snow would be happy. Or, well, fuck Snow. I was doing this for my own benefit. The more popular I became through exchanging niceties with the everyday citizen I could meet in cafes or parks, the harder it would become for him to willy-nilly try to ruin me.

* * *

Finnick prided himself in his quick witted charisma. If he were only a pretty face, then he'd just be like every other mentally unstable victor with a half decent smile. Of course the games ruined probably a good ten year's worth of sanity on his part, but he knew how to talk to people and how to make them want to be with him. Like a living, breathing sex doll who could make even the most bitter crack a smile at his effortless flirting.

Part of his charisma was an uncanny ability to read people. He could read a room's atmosphere and know how to act from there, what actions to catch people's attention, or how to make himself seem even more desirable and trustworthy. Facing unreadable people was inevitable of course, but he'd never met someone as _confusing _as the victor of the sixty-ninth games, Blaire Hawthorne.

He could read her, but then he couldn't. Through last year games' interviews, he found her to be a sweet and smart girl, capable of nearly bloodthirsty cunning. Which were maybe half the victors anyway. No visible signs of mental deterioration besides that awkward victory tour dinner - forgivable, he hadn't had the best victory tour himself - or any psychological freakout in the arena, despite the horrid geographical conditions of the sixty-ninth games. Finnick knew that the only tributes turned victors who hadn't suffered any sort of freakout in the arena fell under specific personality categories. Most, if not all, Careers trained from a young age and were trained to understand the games. They had conditioned themselves against the mental agony in order to receive eternal glory. While he hadn't specifically trained to be a Career in his youth, the harsh sea taught his body and mind endless endurance. Again, he hadn't learned how to use a trident to one day pierce a child in the sternum with it, but to hunt sharks. His knife and weaving handiwork came from handling fishing boats, not used to make death traps. But the Capitol didn't need to know that, it was better for everyone around if they knew he had originally been so prepared all along.

The trouble with Blaire, Finnick found, was that she had come to the games with unmatched determination. Somehow, she had picked up skills as useful as his, and reaped the benefits of a Career worthy skill set. Even now, she was treated as if she came from a richer district, not the coal mining dumb district twelve, and this was all due to how she carried herself. Her words were so carefully selected he wondered at one point if her team was feeding sentences. Blaire acted the qualities of an experienced adult, yet was still such an innocent child. The strange juxtaposing of personalities caught his attention the most, mostly on part of wondering how a young girl such as herself knew such proper mannerisms. Some things were only learned through age and experience, yet she conveyed them all perfectly.

Someone so confusing would've been the ideal person to ignore, but also what drew him to her strangeness was her astounding innocence. Any and every little scrape on her baby faced tributes' knees could be reflected in Blaire's worry. Could she be innocent enough to allow herself to care for those two pre-teens who were basically already decked out in halos?

Perhaps he was the hypocrite, hoping to the ends of the world and back that his own tribute made it out alive.

He had a dinner date with one of his "lovers" in the mean time, so he couldn't waste his time on would-bes and had-beens. Blaire would forever be an odd figure in his mind. She was sweet and forthcoming. She was warm and full of delicate smiles he knew would only increase her risk of damage. But underneath the pleasant appearance marred as harshly as the jagged burns down her spine and arm. Wisdom beyond her years, yet unrivaled purity. Maturity grown through a somber atmosphere. Little cracks could be seen in her mental state the more he examined her, so he let it go.

He didn't think she'd last too long in the future anyway.

* * *

When Beau's pale, limp body was collected from the bloody pile next to the Cornucopia, I wanted to throw up. I had told her to run, hadn't I? Done everything possible to make sure she survived? Told her to immediately run away as fast as possible, ignoring all the shiny new weapons at the center. And she listened - she had - but then a Career tribute had grabbed a spear next to his feet and let it fly to the nearest person.

It had been the little twelve year old with angelic blonde curls and a bright dimpled smile.

"It gets easier," Haymitch whispered into my ear, his whiskey breath huffing all over my neck. I didn't have the energy to push the drunk man in our shared cubicle off, so I let him giggle and snort about something his intoxicated brain conjured up on my shoulder.

Some ethical duty made me stare at his hologram screen while he was unable, to make sure Anton still lived. And he did. He made his way out the bloodshed in record time, barely lugging a backpack over his shoulders while making it the hell out of the open, grassy field.

My eyes stayed glued to the screen for hours, not noticing the drop of the sun past the windows beyond us. Haymitch snored fitfully when I jumped from a hand on my shoulder. My hands immediately shot down to my sides, where I kept a whittling knife strapped, before realizing that the voice had to belong to another victor in the room.

"Come on, newbie. Up you go. It's break time," a mildly familar voice said.

"Sorry, a bit busy here," I responded, still watching Anton settling down underneath a mangle of tree roots for the night.

The voice - a man's voice - sighed. "My sister wants to talk to you," he pressed. "Come on now, Cashmere gets sassy when she's annoyed."

I allowed myself to whirl my seat to face the opposite direction. Chiseled jawline, golden blond hair, richly tanned skin stretching over lean muscle. "Oh, hello, Gloss. Are we allowed to even talk to each other during this delicate time period? Haymitch isn't exactly the type to debrief me on this type of stuff."

The twenty one year old grinned crookedly. "Our favorite drunk. No, there's no rule prohibiting mentors to socialize. So, you wanna do this to easy way or the hard way? 'Cause I can just swing you over my shoulder or drag you over, or you can come walk peacefully. Your choice."

"My choice, indeed," I bit out, then begrudgingly walked over to the awaiting district one mentor, sitting at a small dining table near the floor to ceiling windows. Gloss sighed again, then wandered away.

Cashmere had to be one of the most gorgeous women I'd ever laid eyes on. Luscious golden locks cascaded down her back and framed her face, playful shamrock green eyes twinkled under the low lighting, and an excellent, curvy physique covered in clothes that left little to the imagination - a model. A star.

(Deadly and vicious)

"Lightning girl," she mused. "Have a seat."

I peeked back towards my hologram screen to assure that nothing catastrophic had happened to Anton in the last few seconds, then hurried my butt down. "I don't believe we've ever been formally introduced. Blaire Hawthorne," I greeted, clamping down my nerves.

The sex-on-legs young woman dipped her head into a nod. "How'd you win your games?" She asked straight away.

My right eye twitched. "By electrocuting my enemies. By surviving in the burning desert. By making sure I was popular enough."

Cashmere's lips twitched into a slight smirk at the last statement. "Oh, yes," she agreed. "You were surprisingly popular. My lover was simply taken aback by your... ability. He often roots for your type of person, you see?"

A heavy weight dropped to the bottom of my core. "Your lover wouldn't happen to be named Quintius Bast, would he?"

A strange, unnamed emotion flitted through her face. "Don't get all involved with him, lightning girl," she spat, then stood up and walked back to her station.

My first thought was that Cashmere was jealous. But that didn't make sense. The victor from district one had all the riches in the world and the most dazzling features - what could she possibly want with a slimy little Capitol rascal like Bast? But her wording seemed a little peculiar, so I invested time into that. "Don't get all involved with him," she had said.

A warning?

The curve of the blonde's hips and the swell of her breasts made me reconsider her character. With her face and body, of course she'd be prostituted to a wide range of buyers. Had she been first given to Bast? How old was she again, when she won her games?

Instead of dwelling too deeply on that matter, I dragged myself back to the district twelve section, where Haymitch had finally awoken and was bobbing his head up and down to whatever the district eleven mentors were saying. Seeder and another mentor who I had met on my victory tour but never bothered to acquaint myself with. I zoned out, curling my legs up to my chest on the wide chair seats and resting my chin on my hands to settle into a semi-comfortable permanent viewing position.

Anton lasted until just before dawn. I was the last victor left in the surveillance room by then, everyone else having enough confidence that their victor could survive without outside supervision or didn't care enough, such as district six's morphling mentors. Seeing the little boy's organs strewn out around a group of laughing Careers didn't ignite any sort of fire inside. I just felt... empty. It hurt more to realize this, that I didn't care enough from the beginning anyway. Did this make me a bad person? Could I have done anything anyway? Living life comfortably in a big mansion and only stressing out about little children who would've died anyway?

When I entered to my apartment in the Victor's Squire - no need to return to the Training Center - just as the dregs of sunlight filtered through the clouds, an electric note had been left inside. It outlined another meeting time with Bast later that day. Instead of resting for another stressful meeting, I paced around the living room, whistling a mindless tune and busying my fidgeting hands with a block of wood and a knife.

I supposed it was nice of Snow to only arrange "lover" meetings after my tributes had died, so I could waste all my nervous energy trying to make sure they survived in the days leading up to their actual death. But the several minuscule cuts on my fingers betrayed my emotions, so in the hour leading up to getting picked up I washed away the blood under stinging antiseptics and watched a boring television channel about the history of the Capitol's favorite singing talents.

Seeing Bast again reminded me of my mother, but no tears trickled out from the squeezing pain in my chest. I smiled and laughed alongside him. He held my hand and patted my hair and I didn't break down until I returned to my quarters and stared at the beautiful jewelry sets he had gifted me.

Rubies. Hadn't Effie said something about rubies?

The next day was a little better. No obligatory meetings with anyone. Seeder invited Haymitch and I to lunch in the district eleven training center quarters. I zoned out for most of the meal, picking at the honey cakes and played with the syrupy droplets immaturely. The lounge room was a little better, with less people traveling in and out. I hacked off more pieces of expensive furniture around me and poured everything into ignoring the world via whittling.

Little clacking noises interrupted the steady flow of the knife. On a nearby lounge chair rested the old district four mentor, Mags. The gummy old lady had two obscenely large crochet needles in hand and a large pile of some sort of yarn thread. As if sensing the disturbance, she raised her head and met my gaze. She warbled something I half understood and continued her crafting.

The next few days continued like that. Effie or Venia (who now had neon yellow skin) dragged me out into socializing in the morning hours for appropriate media coverage, I checked on Haymitch to make sure he hadn't died in the middle of the night, and then completely destroyed a few pieces of furniture in the mentors' lounge room. Mags was a nice companion to have, even if I wasn't willing to engage further conversation with someone completely outside of my frame of social knowledge. There weren't many elderly people in district twelve for obvious reasons so I wasn't sure on what kind of shared interests topic we could have a possible discussion on. I grew to enjoy Mags' presence, no matter that we probably exchanged a total of twelve words over the past week.

Nine days after Anton's last breath, a seventeen year old Annie Cresta was named the victor of the seventieth games.

I didn't see much of her, but what little screen coverage she had in the after parties of the games were filled with loud, panicked tears and wailing screams. The public was divided, to see such a horribly sick girl. Some pitied her, for not living up to the other victors' standards. My name was thrown around a lot, several comparisons made. Some romanticized her experiences, enjoying seeing her broken mind and wishing to be "strange" and "different" like her.

The return trip home felt empty, with no Effie and no stylist team. The train conductors and accompanying peacekeepers didn't make for good conversation, and the main compartment reminded me of the quiet chatter of Beau and Anton. I didn't especially want to apologize to their families for being unable to hold true to a false promise, so I didn't.

My bags were full of priceless jewelry and more, to which I deposited them into the locked up attic of our home, where everyone and no one welcomed me back.


	10. Chapter 10

**Dreamers Live to Die**

**I did the cowardly thing and tried to avoid the future as much as possible, even with all the devastatingly powerful information behind my lips. But alas, fate found its way to bite me in the ass. [SI-OC Gale's twin sister]**

**Published 2020.08.20**

**71st Hunger Games**

**Warning: adult language, non explicit mentioned sex, alcohol and side effects of alcohol written in detail, mentions of some other shady club related shit that I should probably warn you about but I don't have a descriptive enough word for what exactly the warning is, a few mentions of gore related content because of the extreme violence taking place between tributes in the games**

* * *

Blaire bounced back into her normal self much faster after the seventieth games than what Peeta remembered in the aftermath of her victory tour. Instead of weeks of crying and unexplainable behavior, there were only a few days of complete silence from the Hawthorne family until some of the siblings returned back to school without stress lines or absent words.

He took it upon himself to visit her the Sunday after her return, confident enough that he wouldn't be shunned this time. Rory, one of the Hawthorne siblings who Peeta found awkward to make conversation with, opened the front door.

"She's in the backyard," The ten going on eleven year old said before shutting the door in his face.

Slightly affronted, Peeta circled around the front to enter through the back gate and to the expansive backyard. At first glance the backyard looked empty but Peeta knew better now. He walked across the property towards the line of trees in the back and stared up from the trunk into the top branches. As expected, a fourteen year old girl was hanging from her knees, reading a book upside down.

She was his best friend, someone he felt completely natural and carefree with. They cultivated their hobbies together for an unbelievable amount of money that he still couldn't wrap his head around (and he came to his senses when finally being able to purchase his own art supplies through government request). She was enigmatic and strong, he loved hanging out with someone like her, even through her toughest moments. But there were moments like these when Peeta wondered how in the world they became friends in the first place. Blaire was an enigmatic figure, but sometimes _too _enigmatic.

"Are you... are you reading a book upside down?"

Blaire tilted her head to acknowledge his appearance. "Oh, hey Peeta. I mean, no? It's the right way up."

He struggled to understand her sometimes. Forgivable, since her mental state wasn't always the best. "Blaire, that's not - yes, your book is facing the right way up, but you're not. You're upside down."

She takes a glance at her reading material. "Oh. That might... explain some things. Anyway, what's up? Nothing too interesting happened while I was away, right?" She tucked the book under one arm and hook the other around the branch, then with a fancy show of acrobatics, spun her body around the branch before leaping off onto the ground next to him. To say that he was used to it by now would be a bold faced lie.

Because he knew she enjoyed background chatter and he enjoyed talking, he went on about his day, the inanities of school, the weird looking rabbit he painted last night, and more.

As the weeks passed and the season changed into autumn and Blaire was still her normal sane self, Peeta let himself relax more and come over more often. They were filled with inexplicable amounts of energy, bouncing between every part of town to the meadows to the sliver of tree line around her neighborhood to even the dregs of the Hob. After school ended, he raced up to the Victor's Village with a skip in his step and a sweet melody on his lips. Rory and Vick hung out on the recess field to play games with their friends at the end of the day and Gale barely attended school in the first place, so he didn't have to oblige to an awkward conversation while walking up to the Hawthorne home. And upon arrival, Mrs. Cartwright, the toddler Posy's babysitter, usually welcomed him in. Then if Posy wasn't taking a nap, she would shuffle over to him and cram a "secret" snack in his hands - usually a vegetable she had been hiding she didn't want to eat - and the encounter would make his day. He hung out with his best friend, went home for dinner, did his homework and paintings, and went to bed.

The days continued in a nice, steady schedule. He ignored his classmate friends' teasing - what did they know, anyway? - and enjoyed every bit of each day. The schedule was interrupted on a chilly December afternoon, when Blaire finally made an appearance on school grounds again.

At first, he was excited. Maybe she would be returning back to classes and resume that promised teaching position? Ms. Milligan already had one foot in the grave by now. No, it was too late in the day to attend anything, school had just ended and children were filing out from their last class or hanging out in the recess fields. He called out her name and waved his hand around while running to the awkward place in the asphalt near the school entrance. Or maybe she had come to visit him? Or her brothers? He already felt proud of her mental improvements, being able to visit highly social areas again to - .

"Peeta, was Gale at school today?"

He blinked. Her serious toned jarred him. "Ummm... actually, I don't think so. Blaire?"

"That's not good," she said slowly. She bowed her head and walked back down the street. He didn't know what else to do but silently follow her back to the Victor's Village. He followed her inside, matching her stiff greetings to Mrs. Cartwright and Posy. They were in her bedroom now, a room he hadn't visited much due to the fact Blaire lived most her days in her woodworking den, consequently him too.

He waited by the door, watching her slow and tranquil movements across the room. She wore a serene expression and her legs moved nimbly, but her fingers trembled and shook when searching through cabinets and closets.

"Do you know where Gale is?" He asked.

She nodded. Okay, today was a nonverbal day.

A few minutes after fidgeting with cabinet drawers, her body finally caught up with her mind and her outward demeanor became frazzled. Her steps were shaky and she couldn't meet his eyes, so Peeta carefully took a seat on the edge of her bed and gently patted the space next to him. She didn't sit down, but she paid enough attention for him to butt in.

"Do you want me to get Vick?" He said. knowing the kind hearted boy would know more about Gale than him. She didn't respond, so he tried again. "Do you want me to leave you alone?"

This time, she nodded, so he kept his distance and went home. That night, he didn't sleep a wink.

Two days later, he noticed Gale return to school with a giant scar on his chin and the quiet rumor spreading around that someone had sold an entire freshly dead bear at the Hob. Peeta waited another few days to visit Blaire, who appeared to have regressed and progressed at the same time. Her hands kept fumbling with a block of wood and a whittling knife even during conversations and social interactions, random parts of her body twitched or spazzed out at strange times, and her conversations sometimes halted mid-sentence without her realizing. But she learned to smile more, laugh more, and otherwise seem friendlier.

He vaguely knew that Gale traveled past the fence to provide game for the community. Everyone knew about his hunting. Everyone also knew about Katniss' hunting, but she was a little more discreet, a little more reserved about it. He didn't know anything about hunting other than hunting could sometimes take up to an entire day, sometimes more. It was during the "sometimes more" periods of when Gale was absent from the Hawthorne home that Blaire's anxiety rose and strangled everything.

Peeta tried to be there for his friend as much as possible, but sometimes he just wanted to punch her brother in the nose without consequence.

* * *

Katniss knew hunger. She knew fear. She knew the fear of starving away until only skin and bones were left and even laying down to rest could mark the last of your willpower to live. She didn't stop moving, always steady on her feet and keeping a quick eye on her surroundings. She never stopped hunting to provide for her family, even after Gale's countless protests. "Let me take care of it," he always said. "Let me take care of you," is what he actually meant, she knew.

If she were a smarter, better person, she would've accepted all of Gale's offers and embrace his aid. At first, when his sister came back from the sixty-ninth games, she became swept up in the cheer and gladly accepted his little bakery presents, gifts of new clothes, and more. But seeing Prim jump up in joy at new winter coats or a better furnace thanks to the efforts of someone else made Katniss feel as though she was drowning and losing grip on reality. For so long she had been their sole provider, often helping the Hawthorne family by hunting more game with Gale due to the family's larger numbers, and now? The easier quality of life felt more threatening than mother nature's harshness. Not having to work as much made her feel jittery and nervous, so her solution was to hunt and risk her life outside the fence even more. She developed a stronger bond with Gale, knowing he must've felt the same.

Without the need to provide, where were they? What were they even doing?

So they hunted and ventured around the wild for community efforts in the Hob, trying to avoid losing grip on what made them who they were.

She didn't hate Blaire for this stumble, of course not. Blaire's mind had to be far more displaced than hers and it wasn't like Katniss was about to blame the older girl for _winning the games_. But more often than not, she didn't know how to behave or react around her. Gale was safe, strong, and sturdy. There were no surprises bursting out from him. Vick and Rory were chatty and the tad bit immature, a childish fun she knew how to handle. Posy was too young for Katniss to know much about other than that the toddler tended to stuff unwanted vegetables down her pants pockets whenever she came over into their house.

Maybe in the future, Katniss would get around to having a stable conversation with Blaire. Maybe, maybe not. Only time would tell.

* * *

If there were a way to _aggressively _crochet, I must be doing it right now.

"How do you mess up so badly your hat turns into a sock?" Triti asked, quirking an elegant eyebrow at my disastrous creation. Mags warbled something half intelligible before straight up laughing at the conglomeration of woolly yarn knotted up into something vaguely resembling a giant sock.

Was I venting my feelings into destroying a fluffy article of clothing? Yeah, sure. The district twelve victors hadn't survived past the first few minutes at the cornucopia and the rush of deep red blood squirting through the field burned into my eyes. A day of carving up memorial wood busts had worn out the stress and guilt, so I had joined Mags in one of the numerous public lounge spaces in the Victor's Spire in harmless crocheting. Triti eventually wandered by - the district eight victors had also died on the first day, apparently - and joined our peaceful duo in crafting.

"It... It was supposed to be a bag."

The most nerve wrecking part of my entire stay at the Capitol had to be the lack of an invite with Bast. There had been no arranged meeting time from President Snow, no mention of Indigo, no nothing. It felt too good to be true, to have the entire games be government meddling free with a chance to relax in the most luxurious city in Panem as a high class celebrity. All eyes and ears in the media were still on me, as the seventieth victor had not made any sort of public appearance at all, not even having embarked on a victory tour. Annie's psych must be worse than anyone thought. But the lack of Annie related content and news feed meant that the public's focus was still on me. Reporters crowded the outside of the apartment, one of the television channels dedicated itself to my physiognomy and the constellations in my freckles, and even Haymitch warned something about being careful outside. Thus, I hadn't stepped outside the Victor's Spire all day.

"I'm fifteen, I don't have the patience to repeat a single needle movement hundreds of times. With whittling, every stroke is different, every piece of wood chipped off is new and interesting," I protested, flicking a stray piece of wool thread at Triti. The district eight mentor, I'd come to realize the more I hung out with her, left a strange impression. At first I thought of her as demure and quiet, but she was just as strange and erratic as me, but in a reserved manner. Maybe that was why she didn't seem to have any friends, or had any relevant news articles written about her relationships.

Mags, by far, had to be the strangest victor I'd met, however. The reason being was that she was the nicest and most calming one so far. The words "victor" and "nice" didn't mesh together very often.

The next two weeks followed like this. I stuck around in the Victor's Spire, mindlessly watching inane television programs, crafting little objects with Mags and Triti (who only showed up half the time), whittling and carving, and doing my damnedest to avoid any Hunger Games responsibilities. Until around fifteen days after the games started, I heard a knock on my door one mid afternoon and the familiar sound of an electric note buzzing a notification.

Ah, of course. The catch. No Bast, then what else must I blearily drag myself into?

Around half an hour later, my entire prep team arrived at my doorstep, their familiar chatter somewhat easing my nerves.

"Oh, it's so hard to get into Temulentus!" Flavius exclaimed, his hands immediately grabbing my shoulders to inspect the fine dust of my clothing. Venia and Octavia shut the door with multiple supply bags in hand. "It's the latest _rage. _Do you know how hard it is to reserve a private room? My goodness!"

"I've never been to a club before," I confessed, letting my body relax and have the three friendly stylists work their magic.

Venia gasped. "Oh my, it's like the best."

"Okay," I said, letting my mind drift away as they set me down in a chair and stripped me. "Sure, let's go someday."

More squeals erupted, I might've promised something I didn't really want but whatever. Having glittery gels rubbed into my scalp and soft cinnamon lotion lathered all over my body dispensed a sizable amount of stress. Perhaps being the center of attention in the Capitol wasn't a bad thing after all, if my prep team treated me to relaxing beauty treatments all the time.

They zipped me up in a short red dress to compliment the gold glitter highlights and an unfortunate pair of heels. They lifted me off the ground a solid four inches and I hated it.

"This is fun," I lied, wobbling down the room. "Thank you for your hard work."

Arriving at Temulentus was an entirely different matter. Dozens of flashing cameras awaited the glitzy neon entrance and as soon as I stumbled inside hands, fingers, elbows, and tongues - _yuck _\- jabbed me as I made my way into the promised private section.

The scent of sex, stale perfume, and sickly sweet cocktails invaded my senses. Exotic feathers, marble beads, and lavish leather couches lined the private zone of the club. At the far end, a half moon sofa seating area raged as the center of attention. A few other youthful victors were strewn about, half drunken men and women and servers hanging off the edge.

"Remember to smile," someone whispered in my ear from behind. I twirled around, elbow already cocked and ready to protect, but the other person wields a dominating strength against my split second instinctive jab. Gloss gripped my hip and attacking elbow with a bruising grip, but his easy smile and acquainted familiarity allowed me to come back to my senses and relax. Consequently, he also relaxes his grip and let us move onward without hassle.

The club patrons and guests noticed our appearance at last, because the music changed into the jauntier tune and servers immediately rushed over with refreshments. I accepted the glazed strawberry dessert out of politeness.

"I'll do my best," I said. "But I am curious."

His face curled up into a satisfied smirk and - _oh. _Oh, okay, his appearance definitely helped him win his games. "Don't mind me, lightning girl."

"Hello, arrogant bastard," another voice snuck up behind us. My body reflexively jumped out the way, but us standing in the middle of a peeking dance floor made every nerve in my body panic regardless. Finnick grinned lopsidedly and brushed a hand through bronze hair. "Don't mind me either, lightning girl."

Standing besides two alpha male victors should've sent warning bells ringing in my brain, but surprisingly after the initial panic, I felt safer around the two men than if I had skulked off to a boozy corner in the foreign environment.

"Where's Cashmere?" I asked Gloss, hoping to seek companionship with the young woman who most likely couldn't be an entirely bad person, if she had warned me about Bast. I didn't have a good enough read on her brother, other than _hot _and _arrogant._

Said district one victor quirked an elegantly sculpted eyebrow and smirked (or maybe that was his default expression). "My sister? You lower district victors may not know this, but we tend to switch out mentors in the Career districts, seeing how there are so many of us."

A few pink skinned ladies wearing nothing but leopard print bodysuits sighed dreamily and cradled themselves around us, dragging us to the half moon sofa towards the back. More and more guests came to figuratively drape themselves over us three victors, words carefully chosen and boasting enough to please.

"You're so popular," someone moaned dreamily to Finnick, who didn't show the slightest hint of discomfort in his position. "You've been selected as a mentor for the past _five times._"

"Aren't there three other male victors in district four?"

"Oh, who cares. Maybe he really does wish to come here all the time and entertain his string of lovers. Did you know...?"

On the other side of the sofa was Gloss, with cerulean blue men and women covered in fine silks and nothing at all drinking away. "_I heard Gloss has been voted the most handsome victor from one for the past seven years."_

"Didn't he win the sixty-third games?"

_"That's the point, he's so dreamy~!"_

They were trapped. The two handsome young men were trapped here for the rest of their life due to their astounding popularity. Me? I didn't have a choice to continue to mentor for the games. But those two kept on getting chosen again and again to service the Capitol. But I, too, felt trapped. The heady smells drowned me, the glittery flashes of light burned into my brain, slimy hands from the pink skinned men and women combed through my hair and massaged my thighs as my head lolled back against the cushions, fighting the swallowing emptiness growing inside my soul. The music raged on, switching beats and tempos faster than I could digest. Jarring blurs of techno thrill escaped, sending everyone into slithering dances.

"Why are you crying?" Someone with a sultry voice asked. I refused to lift my head and stare into the depths of the abyss, so I kept my body still for the groping hands to track everywhere.

"Because," I managed to choke out. "You're not. You're not giving me something to drink. I want. I want it."

The monsters leisurely poured a saccharine mixture down my lips. The ceiling tiles blurred and c_racked. _The music pumped through my veins and I laughed. The monsters licked the tears off my cheeks and I laughed. The monsters fed me more bright pink liquids and sugary snacks and I laughed. I smiled sweet and wide, giggling drunkenly without acting, thriving off the shaking distortions of the world and movement of the dance floor.

I maintained to be sober enough to remember which vehicle outside the club was mine. There were far less camera flashes in the wee hours of the morning, but I made sure to give a wave and a bright smile. My driver gave me a sour drink - for hangovers, he had said - before dropping me off at the Victor's Spire. Gloss and Finnick had stayed at the club, maybe to sleep with the guests or for genuine enjoyment I didn't know and didn't care enough to ask before wobbling off.

The next morning I realized I had lost the four inch high heels in the club. Octavia would be mad. And Flavius. Maybe Venia, but I knew I was buttering up to her enough that I could probably kill one of her friends and she'd laugh it off.

Oh well.

The realization that I had drunk alcohol last night didn't fully set in until I caught a glimpse of Haymitch with Seeder in one of the lounge rooms downstairs. My face flushed without realizing and I ran all the way back to my apartment and cried in the bathroom. I felt - I felt _ashamed. _And _scared._ Would I end up like Haymitch after I had locked him out of my world for his irresponsibility? Did he know how much of a hypocrite his fellow victor just...

It engulfed me. But I wanted to do it again, I wanted to let loose and party and drink and let whimpering hands pamper me.

So I trapped myself in the Spire for the next three days out of guilt and to assure my senses I wasn't going to become like Haymitch. My body and mind could be stronger than his. They _were_ stronger.

By the end of three weeks, the finale finally rolled up on screens. Effie had delightfully dragged me to a breakfast place a close walk from the city center as per my request to socialize more. By the time we had finished the meal, blabbering crowds formed outside, alerting us of the final battle ensuing in the games. I made it in time to the Training Center with the other mentors in rapt attention to the large and numerous screens.

"All six of the Careers are duking it out in one last battle," Triti notified me upon my entrance. I took a seat next to her chair and watched the drama unfold.

"I don't know why I'm here," I told her honestly. "Crowds of people outside rushed me to the Training Center."

Triti hummed. "It's an epic fight that's been going on for about forty minutes now. I'm surprised none of them have died yet."

And at her words, the boy from two released an ear piercing scream through the monitors and stumbled to the ground. The girl from one snarled viciously from behind him, her weapon glistening with his blood from having sliced through his achilles heel. With decisive action, she swung her broadsword straight through his neck like butter. Blood spurted out from sputtering veins and cracked structures. I wanted to close my eyes and go back to my apartment, but a vague memory tickled the back of my brain to convince me to continue watching the bloodshed.

"Triti? Isn't the girl from seven still alive?"

"Is she? I don't - ."

Suddenly, the cameras all zoomed to the boy from four pausing in his tracks with an axe stuck in the back of his skull. His back had been to the tree line, a safe distance from the center of the all on war. A wild teenage girl broke out from hiding and let loose a manic laugh with bloodshot eyes. She swore loudly and triumphantly, dislodging the axe from the victim's brains.

Seventeen year old Johanna Mason _purged _through the rest of the tributes in less than two minutes. I let myself out the surveillance room once Johanna had been declared the victor of the seventy-first hunger games and I could breathe easy.

The victor from district seven only took a day to recover before being thrust into the spotlight once more. Effie told me to attend one of the after parties, so I did. She didn't tell me to drink again, but I did. She didn't tell me to dance with Johanna, but I did. She didn't tell me to flirt and play nice, but I did. I brought Johanna into my suite, my district twelve top floor apartment in the Victor's Spire. We danced some more before letting go of inhibitions.

The morning after wasn't awkward, not really. She embraced her body and walked around in the nude in the kitchen, gorging on the bountiful feast the staff must have provided while we slept (which did not ring alarm bells in my head until much later). We were both barking mad and giggling over nothing and it was glorious.

The other girl was taller and had a more womanly frame than mine so I didn't have any clothes to lend to her. It was fine, she said. I didn't see much of a problem if she didn't have a problem, so I wore a breezy blue dress while escorting the completely naked Johanna back to her suite.

Over the next few days we attended more events. I hadn't known the proper mentor party protocols because last year's game had most of its celebrations cancelled due to Annie not being mentally capable of handling anything other than sleeping pills, but this time around there were more parties, more interviews, and more glitter and jazz in the background. This was why only the popular and relevant mentors kept getting invited back, because being a mentor held almost the same status as a fresh victor or any other celebrity. I'd always known the capitol enjoyed the hunger games, but the continuously glimmering road and indulgences cemented the understanding.

I continued seeking the comfort of Johanna for the rest of the few days left in the Capitol. We were similar ages, had similar experiences, came from lower districts, and had to vent off somehow. She was hot, I was pretty, end of story.

On the last day before heading back home, one final electric note had been left at my door. I greeted Indigo lazily and let him tout me off into another colorful and extravagant setting. At this point I didn't care enough, having guiltily indulged in a little bit of everything this entire game. I was led into a small, private restaurant near the edge of the downtown, where only own stark table was rented out and there were no staff in sight.

Haymitch and a plump middle aged man were sitting down, dining on nothing.

"Hello Blaire," Plutarch Riggsbee said. "Why don't you take a seat. It's about time we included you into rebellion plans."


End file.
